Mattia Pinto

Profile

Biography

Dr Mattia Pinto

PhD (LSE), Single-Cycle Master’s Degree in Law (Bologna, Italy), LLM (KCL), PGCertHE (LSE)

Lecturer and Deputy Director, Centre for Applied Human Rights (CAHR)

As a legal academic and researcher, I specialise in the critical analysis of human rights and in the political sociology of criminal law. My work examines the entanglements between human rights and penality, where the enforcement of human rights increasingly relies on punitive frameworks and institutions.

I am currently a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at York Law School and Deputy Director of the Centre for Applied Human Rights (CAHR).

I hold a PhD in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), a Single Cycle Degree in Law (MJur) from the University of Bologna, and an LLM in Transnational Law from King’s College London. I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). 

Previously, I taught at the LSE Law, interned at the European Court of Human Rights (Registry) and the International Criminal Court (Office of Public Counsel for the Defence), and worked as a research assistant in international criminal law at King's College London.

My publications appear, among others, in the Modern Law Review, Human Rights Quarterly, Theoretical Criminology, International Journal of Law in Context and London Review of International Law.

Research

Overview

I approach the study of human rights and penality from a social-legal and transnational perspective which investigates the functions and limits of law as a social phenomenon, embedded in historical and socio-political contexts. 

I have three ongoing strands of research:

1. Human Rights as Sources of Penality
2. Rethinking Accountability Beyond the Penal Frame
3. Law as/and Discourse

For more information on my research, please see my page on York Research database

I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students interested in human rights, criminal law, socio-legal theory, or law and discourse.

Publications

Selected publications

For an up-to-date list of research publications, please see my page on York Research database.

Peer Reviewed Journal

‘In Pursuit for Greater Accountability for Torture: The Case of Giulio Regeni After Judgment No. 192/2023 of the Italian Constitutional Court’ (with Piergiuseppe Parisi) (2024) Italian Yearbook of International Law (In press)

‘Border Penality as Antagonistic Politics’ (2024) Theoretical Criminology (E-pub ahead of print)

‘Coercive Human Rights and the Forgotten History of the Council of Europe's Report on Decriminalisation’ (2023) 86(5) Modern Law Review 1108

‘Discursive alignment of trafficking, rights and crime control’ (2022) International Journal of Law in Context 1-21

‘Of Sex and War: Carceral Feminism and Its Anti-Carceral Critique’ (2021) 8(2) London Review of International Law 351

‘Historical Trends of Human Rights Gone Criminal’ (2020) 42(4) Human Rights Quarterly 729 (open access version published in the LSE Law Working Papers)

‘Awakening the Leviathan through Human Rights Law: How Human Rights Bodies Trigger the Application of Criminal Law’ (2018) 34(2) Utrecht Journal of International and European Law 161

‘The Denationalisation of Foreign Fighters: How European States Expel Unwanted Citizens’ (2018) 9(1) King’s Student Law Review 67

Book Chapters

‘Rights-driven Global Penality’ in Mazzacuva, Odriozola Gurrutxaga, Recchia and Santangelo (eds), Criminal Justice in the Prism of Human Rights (Maklu Publishers 2023)

‘Human Rights as Penal Drivers Across the World’ in Farmer, Hörnle, Ormerod and Ó Floinn (eds), The Transformation of Criminal Jurisdiction: Extraterritoriality and Enforcement (Hart Publishing, forthcoming).

‘Sowing a “Culture of Conviction”: What Shall Domestic Criminal Justice Systems Reap from Coercive Human Rights?’ in Lavrysen & Mavronicola (eds), Coercive Human Rights: Positive Duties to Mobilise the Criminal Law under the ECHR (Hart Publishing 2020) (open access version published in the LSE Law Working Papers)

Teaching

Undergraduate

•  International Criminal Justice (module convenor)
  
  

Postgraduate

• International Criminal Justice (module convenor)
• Human Rights Placement
• Applying International Human Rights Law

External activities

Overview

• Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy (AFHEA).
• Co-convenor of the Yorkshire Criminal Law Forum.
• Member of the Law and Society Association (LSA), Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA), Associazione Antigone, DoingIPS, Accademia Diritto e Migrazioni (ADiM).
• Regular reviewer for academic journals in the areas of human rights law, (international) criminal law, international law, and international relations.