Leyla Belle Drake

Leyla
Leyla Belle Drake, doctoral student
in the History of Ideas

My research interests concern international criminal law and its various intersections with political activism, knowledge production, refugee law and other fields of international law. My dissertation project explores the 1967 International War Crimes Tribunal, commonly known as the Russell Tribunal. Initiated by Bertrand Russell and other public intellectuals to investigate US war crimes in Vietnam, Tribunal president Jean-Paul Sartre famously claimed that its independence and powerlessness was its strength. The dissertation interrogates this claim and other epistemological assumptions of the Tribunal organizers, such as the commitment to knowledge, facts, science, and victim testimony as strategies for political change.

Contact: leyla.belle.drake@idehist.uu.se