Rate My Professor Nikolas Rajkovic

Nikolas Rajkovic is Full Professor and Chair of International Law in the Department of Public Law and Governance at Tilburg Law School, Tilburg University. He earned his LLB from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in 2002, MA with Distinction in International Relations and European Studies from Central European University in 2005, BA with First Class Honours in Political Science from McGill University in 1999, and PhD from the European University Institute in 2009 on international criminal tribunals and the challenge of domestic compliance, revised dissertation published as The Politics of International Law and Compliance: Serbia, Croatia and The Hague Tribunal (Routledge, 2012). A former practicing attorney and Barrister and Solicitor called to the Bar of Ontario at McCarthy Tétrault LLP (2002-2004), he held academic positions including Assistant Professor of International Relations at Kyung Hee University (2009-2010, where he received an Excellent Lecture Award), postdoctoral researcher in EU Law at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2010-2011), Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in International Law at Kent Law School, University of Kent (2013-2015, awarded Faculty of Social Sciences Prize for Early Career Research in 2015), Adjunct Professor in International Law and Relations at Kyung Hee University (2015-2018) and in Transnational Law at Université de Sherbrooke (2018-2019). At Tilburg University since 2015, he served as Head and Deputy Head of the Public Law and Governance Department (2019-2021), Head of Section International Law, Legal History, European Law and Environmental Law (2019-2020), and Director of the LLM Program in International and European Law (2016-present). He is Senior Faculty and Academic Council member of Harvard Law School’s Institute for Global Law and Policy (since 2015), Associated Researcher at VU Amsterdam’s Centre for the Politics of Transnational Law, Management Committee member of COST Action IS1003 (2011-2015), and Fernand Braudel Fellow and Visiting Fellow at the European University Institute Law Department (2021-2025).

Rajkovic’s research specializes in public international law, international legal theory, international relations theory, interdisciplinarity, international criminal law, law of armed conflict, and critical geography, challenging the cartographic imagination of international law and rethinking global authority through infrastructures, corridors, and pointillistic geographies. Notable publications include the co-edited volume The Power of Legality: Practices of International Law and their Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2016); articles such as “The Visual Conquest of International Law: Brute Boundaries, the Map and the Legacy of Cartogenesis” (Leiden Journal of International Law, 2018), “Performing ‘Legality’ in the Theatre of Hostilities: Asymmetric Conflict, Lawfare and the Rise of Vicarious Litigation” (San Diego International Law Journal, 2020), “What is a ‘Grave’ International Crime? The Rome Statute, Durkheim and the Sociology of Ruling Outrages” (Loyola University Chicago International Law Review, 2020), and forthcoming monograph Off the Map: A Critical Geography of International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2026). His work appears in leading journals including the European Journal of International Relations and Tilburg Law Review. Awards and honors include the Jean Monnet Fellowship in Global Governance (2012-2013), Incentive Grant Award by Dutch Ministry of Education for “GEOLEX Changing Boundaries of Global Legal Authority” (2023-2027), and twice voted Most Inspiring Teacher by Tilburg Law School students (2019, 2023). He teaches courses on public international law continuities and transformations, international law, and international relations power, law and global governance.