Rate My Professor Yvonne McDermott-Rees

Professor Yvonne McDermott Rees is a Professor of Law at the Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law, Swansea University, a position she has held since September 2017. She earned undergraduate law degrees from the National University of Ireland, Galway, an LL.M. (cum laude) in Public International Law from Leiden University, and a Ph.D. from the Irish Centre for Human Rights. Her doctoral thesis received a Special Mention of the Rene Cassin Thesis Prize in 2014 and was published as Fairness in International Criminal Trials (Oxford University Press, 2016). Prior to joining Swansea, she served as Senior Lecturer in Law at Bangor University and worked for the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs. She has consulted for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services, and Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Recognized as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), and Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales (FLSW), she was elected Academic Bencher of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple in 2023 and acts as Legal Advisor to the Global Legal Action Network.

Professor McDermott Rees specializes in international criminal law and procedure, evidence and proof, human rights, and fair trial rights. She is Principal Investigator on the TRUE project, funded by the European Research Council and UKRI since 2022, which examines the impact of deepfakes on trust in user-generated evidence of human rights violations. Previously, she led the ESRC-funded OSR4Rights project (2018-2021) on open source evidence in human rights accountability. Her recent monograph, Proving International Crimes (Oxford University Press, 2024), advances methodologies for evidence evaluation in international trials. Other key works include chapters such as 'Digital Evidence' in The Routledge Handbook of International Criminal Law (2027) and 'Judge and Jury Perceptions of Open Source Evidence' in Digital Witness (Oxford University Press), and articles like 'Mapping the Use of Open Source Research in UN Human Rights Investigations' (Journal of Human Rights Practice, 2022). She co-chairs the Editorial Committee of the Journal of International Criminal Justice, serves on the Editorial Board of Criminal Law Forum, and co-edits the University of Wales series on International Law. Her expertise has informed media discussions on BBC Radio 4, The Guardian, and Washington Post, contributing to advancements in human rights investigations and international criminal procedure.