The School of Law invites you to attend the book launch for:
The Laws of Yesterday’s Wars 2
From Ancient India to East Africa
Edited by Samuel White, Adjunct Research Fellow UNE Law School
Monday 20th March, 7:00pm AEDT via Zoom webinar
How international is international humanitarian law? The laws of yesterday’s wars 2: from ancient India to East Africa, together with its companion volume The Laws of Yesterday’s Wars: From Indigenous Australians to the American Civil War (Brill-Nijhoff, 2021), attempts to answer that question. It offers a culture-by-culture account of various unique restrictions placed on warfare over time. Containing essays by a range of laws of war academics and practitioners it approaches the laws of yesterday’s wars from a wide cross-section of history and culture, seeking to find any Common ground and to demonstrate a history of international law outside the usual confines of its ‘development’ By Europeans and it’s later ‘contributions’. This volume includes studies on Japanese Islamic and eastern Native American rules of war.
Samuel Camden Duckett White MPHA is the inaugural Cybersecurity Post-Doctoral Researcher and RUMLAE Associate Researcher at the University of Adelaide, as well as an Adjunct Research Fellow at the University of New England. In 2018, he served as Associate to the Honourable Justice John Logan of the Federal Court of Australia, Supreme & National Courts of Papua New Guinea, and President of the Defence Force Discipline Appeals Tribunal. From this experience, Samuel has had a distinct focus on legal history and administrative, constitutional and public law. He is admitted to practice as a Solicitor in the State of Queensland and before the High Court of Australia; as well as a Barrister and Solicitor in New Zealand. In 2021, he was recognised by the International Committee of the Red Cross as an ‘Emerging Voice’ for his scholarship in international humanitarian law.
Samuel has served as both a Royal Australian Infantry Corps and an Australian Army Legal Corps officer in various tactical, operational and strategic postings. These include the Directorate of Operations and International Law and Headquarters Maritime Border Command. He holds a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws (Hons) from the University of Queensland; a Master of Laws (Hons I) from the University of Melbourne; a Master of Law from the University of Adelaide; and a Master of War Studies from the University of New South Wales. He is currently completing a PhD at the University of Adelaide.
Contributors
Dr Ahmed Al-Dawoody is the Legal Adviser for Islamic Law and Jurisprudence at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Prior to joining the ICRC, he was an Assistant Professor in Islamic Studies at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. He was the Assistant Director of Graduate Studies for the Institute for Islamic World Studies at Zayed University in Dubai. He earned his PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK; his MA from Leiden University, the Netherlands; and BA from Al-Azhar University, Egypt. He has published many articles, including on the relation between Islamic Law and IHL, and is the author of The Islamic Law of War: Justifications and Regulations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
David Feeney is a Senior Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), an independent, non-partisan think tank established by the Commonwealth Government to provide advice for Australia’s strategic and defence leaders. He is also a member of the NIOA Advisory Board, a 100% Australian defence company, and a member of the Defence Council Victoria (DCV). David has previously served as Senator for Victoria (2008-2013) and Member of the House of Representatives (2013-2018), during which time he held various defence-related portfolios in both Government and Opposition. Mr Feeney was a contributing author in Peter J Dean, Stephan Fruhling and Brendan Taylor (eds.), 2016, Australia’s American Alliance (Melbourne University Publishing, Carlton) and in Tom Frame (ed.), 2017, The Long Road. Australia’s Train Advise and Assist Missions (UNSW Press, Sydney).
Prior to entering Parliament, Mr Feeney served in various roles in the Australian Labor Party, including Assistant National Secretary, Campaign Director for South Australia, Campaign Director for Victorian Labor, and Director of Strategy for the former Premier of Victoria, the Hon. Steve Bracks. He holds a Master of Public Policy and Management (MPPM) from Monash University, a Graduate Diploma in Arts (Advanced) from the University of Melbourne, and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD). David commenced his PhD studies at Melbourne in 2021. David is married to Liberty Sanger, Principal Lawyer at Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, and they are parents to Ned and Matilda.
Anna Kretowicz has worked as an Associate to a Justice of the High Court of Australia. She holds a Bachelor of Laws (with First Class Honours), a Bachelor of Science, and was awarded a University Medal (2020) from the University of Queensland. She has a keen interest in national security laws, laws regulating the media, and their interaction with private law rights and freedoms. She has worked as a research assistant at the University of Queensland and Griffith University, including on projects on contract law in the South Pacific, and the use and effectiveness of technology in the courtroom to record and take evidence of vulnerable victims.
Wayne E. Lee is the Bruce W. Carney Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, and the former chair of the Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense. His most recent book is The Other Face of Battle: The Experience of Combat in America’s Forgotten Wars (Oxford, 2021), co-authored with David Preston, David Silbey, and Anthony Carlson. Other books include Waging War: Conflict, Culture, and Innovation in World History (Oxford, 2016); Barbarians and Brothers: Anglo-American Warfare, 1500-1865 (Oxford, 2011); and Crowds and Soldiers in Revolutionary North Carolina (Florida, 2001). In addition, he has edited two volumes on world military history (both 2011, one is now in a 2020 second edition) and has published many articles and book chapters on subjects ranging from the American Revolution to Native American warfare to Ottoman fortifications to Mongol conquest methods. He is currently working on a world history of making “conquest” stick. He has an additional career as an archaeologist, having done field work in Greece, Albania, Hungary, Croatia, and Virginia, including co-directing two field projects. He was a principal author and a co-editor of Light and Shadow: Isolation and Interaction in the Shala Valley of Northern Albania, winner of the 2014 Society for American Archaeology’s book award. In 2015/16 he held the Harold K. Johnson Visiting Chair of Military History at the U.S. Army War College, and in 2021/22 he was the Colin S. Gray Visiting Chair of Strategic Studies at the U.S. Air Force’s School of Advanced Air and Space Studies.
Dr. Kenneth Wyne Mutuma is a senior lecturer at the University of Nairobi, School of Law. He has more than ten years teaching experience and lends his knowledge and experience in IHL to academia, government and civil society in both East and Southern Africa. Kenneth has previously served as a legal officer for the Nairobi and Pretoria Delegations of the International Committee of the Red Cross. In addition, he has worked with the Nelson Mandela Foundation developing the capacity of governmental bodies and civil society in the areas of conflict resolution and ethical leadership. Kenneth holds several academic qualifications including a PhD on the challenges of outsourcing war to private entities. He also serves as the editor of the Eastern Africa Journal on International Humanitarian Law.
Dr Zuzana Špicová (Charles University, Prague) is a scholar of Sanskrit narratives, especially the Mahābhārata. In her Ph.D. thesis, “‘For Bhīṣma’s Destruction’: Ambā, Śikhaṇḍinī and Śikhaṇḍin in the Mahābhārata”, she presented a narratological analysis of the narratives concerning Bhīṣma’s death and the complex characters who can be seen as his killers, and argued that evaluating subjective narrators is crucial for understanding the Mahābhārata. In her research, she applies current narratological and comparative approaches to both ancient and modern texts. She is predominantly interested in narratives about the warrior class, in autobiographical narratives and narrators, and in the possibilities of analysing ancient texts through the lens of rhetorical narratology. She also translates from Sanskrit and Bangla into Czech: she has translated some works of Śaratcandra Caṭṭopādhyāẏ, most notably Debdās, and is currently working on translating a couple of episodes from the Mahābhārata.
The Laws of Yesterday’s Wars publications are part of the International Humanitarian Law Series both titles can be purchased through brill.com at a 25% discount using the discount code 72325, valid until 31 December 2023.
