René Provost appointed to prestigious McGill professorship

The Faculty of Law is pleased to announce that Professor René Provost, FRSC, Ad E, will be named a James McGill Professor for a seven-year term, effective 1 May 2023.

Created by McGill University in 2000, the James McGill Professor award recognizes a senior scholar’s status as an outstanding and original researcher of world-class caliber and an international leader in their field. A full professor at the Faculty of Law, René Provost teaches and conducts research in public international law, international human rights law, legal theory, and legal anthropology. He was the founding director of our renowned Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism (2005 to 2010). Widely acclaimed for his contribution to public international law, Professor Provost received the Barreau du Québec’s Advocatus Emeritus distinction in 2017 and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2019.

Hailed as “clearly a magnum opus,” his recent monograph Rebel Courts – the Administration of Justice by Armed Insurgents (Oxford University Press, 2021) has received two international awards: the ICON-S Book Prize awarded by the International Society of Public Law, and the American Society of International Law’s Certificate of Merit for a Preeminent Contribution to Creative Scholarship. This book is the culmination of a research project supported by a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation fellowship, through which Professor Provost conducted extensive fieldwork with armed insurgent groups around the world to explore the possibility of convincing them to uphold minimum standards of humanitarian law in conflict zones.

Professor Provost is principal investigator for the Unreserved Justice Project, a SSHRC-funded collaboration with Indigenous leaders from coast to coast to coast on the emerging practice in Canada of Indigenous communities’ establishing institutions and practices to administer justice on their territory.

“I’m delighted to see the extraordinary scholarly leadership of our colleague recognized by McGill through this appointment, which will support his path-breaking research,” said Dean Robert Leckey, Ad E. “We look forward to his continued contributions to the Faculty of Law’s vibrant intellectual life.