Dr. Sergii Masol
Dr. Sergii Masol is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Cologne, sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. His research project is called ‘The Divided East in a Divided Europe: A Comparison of European Union, Ukrainian and Russian Approaches to International Criminal Law’.
Dr. Masol obtained his doctorate in law from the European University Institute in Florence. His doctoral thesis examined the approaches of international criminal tribunals to the interpretation and application of the definitions of international crimes in light of human rights law. Dr. Masol also holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in International Human Rights Law from Lund University.
Dr. Masol was a visiting researcher at the University of Copenhagen and the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He gave guest lectures at Lund University and the University of Milan. In addition, Dr. Masol was an assistant editor at the European Journal of International Law, as well as a senior editor and the head of the international law section at the European Journal of Legal Studies. Moreover, he worked as a research assistant at the European University Institute in Florence.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Masol was a volunteer at Amnesty International and completed internships at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva and the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Lund.
Areas of research
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Comparative international law
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International criminal law
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Human rights
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Treaty interpretation
Memberships
- European Society of International Law (since 2022)
Past professional positions
- Junior Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna (Austria), 2021
- Visiting researcher at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark), 2019
- Research assistant at the European University Institute, Florence (Italy), 2015-2018
- Intern at the International Criminal Court, The Hague (Netherlands), 2013
- Trainee at the European Court of Human Rights, Strasbourg (France), 2012-2013
- Intern at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva (Switzerland), 2012
- Research assistant (intern) at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Lund (Sweden), 2011
Work for scholarly journals
- European Journal of International Law (Assistant Editor), 2015-2016
- European Journal of Legal Studies (Head of the International Law Section), 2017-2018
- European Journal of Legal Studies (Senior Editor), 2015-2018
- European Journal of Legal Studies (Editor), 2014-2015
Current research project
The research project ‘The Divided East in a Divided Europe: A Comparison of European Union, Ukrainian and Russian Approaches to International Criminal Law’ is informed by the theoretical framework of comparative international law. It aims to explore the European tradition in international criminal law. Given the deep disagreement between the European Union, Russia and Ukraine as to the nature of the armed conflict and legal qualification of conflict-related crimes in Ukraine, it is necessary to examine these actors’ divergent understandings of international criminal law. Filling the gap in the anglophone academic literature, the project centres predominantly on the Russian and Ukrainian national legal practices and legal scholarship. It analyses how both have developed over time and how they can be compared with each other and with the European Union’s grand narrative of progress in international criminal law.
Publications
Book chapters
S. Masol, ‘The Content of Internationally Recognised Human Rights under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court’, in J.-P. Pérez-León-Acevedo and J. Nicholson (eds), Defendants and Victims in International Criminal Justice: Ensuring and Balancing Their Rights (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 10-31.
S. Masol, Human Rights Rules and Principles in the Legal Regime of the International Criminal Court: Refining the Super-Legality Approach, in Faix/Svaček (Hg.), ICC Jurisprudence and the Development of International Humanitarian Law (Springer 2024), 97-120. [Link]
Articles
S. Masol, 'Ukraine and the International Criminal Court: Between Realpolitik and Post-truth Politics', 20 Journal of International Criminal Justice (2022), No. 1, 167-190.
S. Masol, ‘War Crimes of Conscription, Enlistment and Use of Child Soldiers: Expendable Human Rights Rhetoric of the International Criminal Court’, 3 Journal of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict – Humanitäres Völkerrecht (2020), Nos. 3-4, 193-208.
Blogposts
S. Masol, ‘From Tartu and Bandung: Decolonising the Debates on the Russo-Ukrainian War’, International Law Blog, 9 October 2023, available at: https://internationallaw.blog/2023/10/09/from-tartu-and-bandung-decolonising-the-debates-on-the-russo-ukrainian-war/ (visited 9 October 2023).
S. Masol, ‘Is Criminality a Russian Virtue Worth Cultivating? The Bill on Crimes Committed in the Interests of Russia and Its Proxies’, Verfassungsblog, 25 January 2023, available at: https://verfassungsblog.de/is-criminality-a-russian-virtue-worth-cultivating/ (visited 25 January 2023).
S. Masol, ‘Orwellian Rulings of the Russian Constitutional Court on the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia Provinces of Ukraine’, EJIL: Talk! Blog of the European Journal of International Law, 25 October 2022, available at: https://www.ejiltalk.org/orwellian-rulings-of-the-russian-constitutional-court-on-the-donetsk-kherson-luhansk-and-zaporizhzhia-provinces-of-ukraine/ (visited 25 October 2022).
Miscellaneous
S. Masol, ‘Protection of the Natural Environment in Non-International Armed Conflicts: A Clash of Methodological Approaches’, in The Sixth Yerevan International Conference for Young Researchers “International Humanitarian Law: Problems and Perspectives of Developments”, Russian-Armenian Slavonic University:Collection of Papers (Yerevan: RAU, 2014), 46-49.
Dr. Sergii Masol
Guest Researcher
address
Kerpener Str. 30
50937 Köln