Prof. dr. Tom Ruys

Prof. dr. Tom Ruys studied law and international relations at the universities of Ghent (Master of Laws, 2003; Ba. Political science, 2004), Nottingham (LLM Public international Law, 2004) and Leuven (Master of Conflict and Sustainable peace studies). He was a Visiting Researcher at Yale Law School in 2008. After obtaining his PhD in Law at the University of Leuven in 2009, he started working as a lawyer at the Brussels bar, focussing in particular on EU law and competition law. At the same time, as from 2009, he acted as a lecturer in Public International Law at the University of Leuven and as a senior research fellow at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies. In October 2013, he joined the faculty of law at the University of Ghent as a tenure-track professor within the department of public international law.

Tom Ruys’ research covers a variety of fields within the domain of public international law, including, first and foremost, international law on the use of force, collective security law and the law of armed conflict. Other research interests include inter alia the sources of international law, treaty law, international dispute settlement, State responsibility, and law of international organizations.

Tom Ruys is the author of several publications,,, including the monograph ‘Armed Attack’ and Article 51 of the UN Charter: evolutions in customary law and practice’ (Cambridge Series in International and Comparative Law, 2010), which was awarded the Lieber Prize by the American Society of International Law.

He is a member of the International Law Association’s Committee on the Use of Force. He is co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Use of Force and International Law (Hart Publishing - http://www.hartjournals.co.uk/jufil/index.html) and member of the editorial board of the Revue belge de droit international.