Dr Clare Frances Moran

Biography

Clare Frances is the co-director of the Aberdeen Centre for Constitutional and Public International Law and lecturer in law at the University of Aberdeen, specialising in international criminal law. She has held external examining appointments at the University of Glasgow and UWE, as well as visiting research positions at Columbia University, New York (2018) and the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law (2013). She is a listed Assistant to Counsel at the International Criminal Court and an invited member of the Cátedra de Educación para la Paz y los Derechos Humanos.

Her research focuses on issues in international criminal law, international humanitarian law, and international human rights law. She has written extensively on the issues of defences in international criminal law, the crime of human trafficking before the International Criminal Court, the relationship between freedom of speech and international criminal law, and the rights of refugees under international law. Her first monograph, 'The Authority of International Criminal Law: A Controversial Concept' was published in 2023 and she is currently writing a second monograph on the problem of shielding in international criminal law, which analyses situations in which governments have been accused of protecting their nationals from prosecution under international criminal law. Her research has informed responses to UK and Scottish parliamentary calls for evidence, and she has been invited to give evidence before Members of the Scottish Parliament.

Clare Frances' work has been funded by the Carnegie Foundation for the Universities of Scotland, the Society of Legal Scholars, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the Scottish Council on Global Affairs. She has been engaged as a peer reviewer for the Swiss National Science Foundation, UKRI and the Carnegie Foundation for the Universities of Scotland, and is a member of the Aberdeen University Press's Academic Advisory Board.

Prizes and Awards

Merit Scholarship holder 2013, International Law Fund.

Research Overview

Clare Frances' research interests relate to international criminal law, international humanitarian law, and international human rights law. Her most recent project culminated in the publication of her first monograph, 'The Authority of International Criminal Law: A Controversial Concept', published in 2023 by Cambridge University Press.

Her work has also engaged with the role of defences in both domestic and the international criminal legal systems, the role of the International Criminal Court in prosecuting human trafficking, and the way in which international criminal law and human rights law can be used to support the rights of refugees.