Profile
Biography
An international law scholar, Professor Ioana Cismas teaches, conducts research and provides legal and policy advice in public international law, human rights law, international humanitarian law, law and religion, and transitional justice. Ioana joined the York Law School in 2017 and was appointed Chair in 2023. She served as Co-director of the Centre for Applied Human Rights between 2022-2025. Ioana’s research is applied, interdisciplinary, co-produced with practitioners and persons with lived experience of conflict and neglected diseases, and geared towards impact generation. Her work has attracted substantial research grants from the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Swiss Network of International Studies, and several non-governmental organisations and charities.
Currently, she leads the FCDO-funded Beyond Compliance Consortium. This research programme develops the empirical evidence base and a contextualisable theoretical framework on how compliance + restraint by armed actors can prevent, reduce and respond to harm + need caused by war.
Prior to joining York, Ioana lectured at Stirling Law School (2015-2017), was a scholar-in-residence at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the New York University School of Law (2014), and a research fellow at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights (2009-2013). At the Geneva Academy, she set up and coordinated the Law Clinic on Transitional Justice. In 2023, she was a Distinguished Fellow at Georgetown Law’s Human Rights Institute.
Ioana consults for international, non - and governmental organisations. In 2013, she served as consultant to the UN Special Rapporteur on transitional justice at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. From 2009-2012, she was legal advisor to a member of the Advisory Committee of the UN Human Rights Council and drafted several studies for the Committee on discrimination in the context of the right to food and noma. Since 2024, she serves as an appointed expert to the World Health Organisation Group of Experts on Noma.
Ioana holds a PhD in International Law (summa cum laude) from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.
Departmental roles
- Member, York Law School Departamental Management Team
- Joint Programme Leader, LLM in International Human Rights Law and Practice (2017 - 2022; Sept. 2025 - present)
- Co-Director, Centre for Applied Human Rights (2022 - 2025)
- Member, Centre for Applied Human Rights Steering Group
University roles
- Member, Economics, Law, Management, Politics and Sociology (ELMPS) Ethics Committee (2017-2022)
Research
Overview
Professor Ioana Cismas’ research interests span the broad discipline of public international law, the specialist branches of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, and related fields, such as law and religion and transitional justice. Ioana’s research seeks to theorise the status and roles of different types of state and non-state actors in international law and explores the intersections between legal accountability and legitimacy. Her projects employ doctrinal, socio-legal, and empirical research methods.
Projects
Recently completed projects
The Generating Respect Project - Generating Respect for Humanitarian Norms: The Influence of Religious Leaders on Parties to Armed Conflict (PI) 2020-2023
The Noma Project - Noma, The Neglected Disease. An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Its Realities, Burden, and Framing (CoI) 2019-2021
Supervision
Ioana is happy to consider supervision of PhD dissertations in the following areas:
- Public International Law - with a focus on the roles, rights and obligations of non-state actors
- International Human Rights Law - in particular economic, social and cultural rights
- International Humanitarian Law - with a focus on compliance and restraint generation processes in armed conflict
- Law and Religion
- Transitional Justice
Publications
Selected publications
Ioana Cismas, "The Relevance of International Law Standards to Religious Leaders", in M. Bergsmo, & K. Manocha (eds.), Religion, Hateful Expression and Violence, TOAEP, 2023, 507-546.
Ioana Cismas, Marta Furlan, Piergiuseppe Parisi, Chris Rush, Ezequiel Heffes and Hasnaa El Jamali, Considerations and Guidance on the Humanitarian Engagement with Religious Leaders, January 2023, 70p.
Ioana Cismas, Ezequiel Heffes and Brook Morrison, Children and Armed Conflict: A Legal Glossary on Abduction and Deportation, Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict & Centre for Applied Human Rights’ Generating Respect Hub, 2023, 26 p.
Alice Trotter & Ioana Cismas, “Framing Noma: Human Rights and Neglected Tropical Diseases as Paths for Advocacy”, in Himani Bhakuni & Lucas Miotto (eds.), Justice in Global Health: New Perspectives and Current Issues (Routledge 2023), 82-110.
Niels Petersen and Ioana Cismas, International Law Association Committee on Human Rights in Times of Emergency - Interim Report, Dec 2020, 30 p.
Ioana Cismas and Ezequiel Heffes, “Not the Usual Suspects: Religious Leaders as Influencers of International Humanitarian Law Compliance”, Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law 22 (2020), 125-150.
Ioana Cismas, “Freedom of Religion or Belief and Freedom of Association: Intersecting Rights in the Jurisprudence of the European Convention Mechanisms”, in Jeroen Temperman, Jeremy Gunn and Malcolm Evans (eds), The European Court of Human Rights and the Freedom of Religion or Belief: The 25 Years since Kokkinakis. (Brill, 2019), 260-281.
Ioana Cismas,‘“The Position of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation on Abortion: Not Too Bad, Ugly, or Just Confusing?” in Marie Juul Petersen and Turan Kayaoglu (eds), The Organization of Islamic Cooperation and Human Rights (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), 166 – 197.
Ioana Cismas and Sarah Macrory, “The Business and Human Rights Regime under International Law: Remedy without Law?” in James Summers and Alex Gough (eds) Non-State Actors and International Obligations: Creation, Evolution and Enforcement (Brill, 2018), 224 – 260.
Ioana Cismas, “Reflections on the Presence and Absence of Religious Actors in Transitional Justice Processes: On Legitimacy and Accountability” in Roger Duthie and Paul Seils (eds.) Justice Mosaics: How Context Shapes Transitional Justice in Fractured Societies (ICTJ, 2017), 302 – 343.
Ioana Cismas and Stacy Cammarano, “Whose Right and Who's Right? The US Supreme Court v. The European Court of Human Rights on Corporate Exercise of Religion”, 34 Boston University International Law Journal 1 (2016), 2 – 44.
Ioana Cismas, “The Child's Best Interests and Religion: A Case Study of the Holy See's Best Interests Obligations and Clerical Child Sexual Abuse”, in Elaine E. Sutherland and Lesley-Anne Macfarlane Barnes (eds.), Implementing Article 3 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: Best Interests, Welfare and Well-being, (Cambridge University Press, 2016), 310 – 325.
Ioana Cismas, “The Intersection of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Civil and Political Rights”, in Eibe Riedel, Gilles Giacca, and Christophe Golay (eds.), Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Contemporary Issues and Challenges (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 448 – 472.
Ioana Cismas, Religious Actors and International Law (Oxford University Press, 2014), 378 p.
Full publications list
For a full list of publications please see Ioana’s Pure Profile.
