Caroline Fournet is Professor of Law at Exeter Law School. Her research builds upon her cross-expertise in international criminal law and human rights law as well as her inter-disciplinary expertise (law, forensic sciences, criminology) to analyse genocide and other international crimes. From 2012 to 2016, she was co-investigator on the ERC-funded multi-disciplinary research programme ‘Corpses of Genocide and Mass Violence’, led by social anthropologist Elisabeth Anstett and Holocaust historian Jean-Marc Dreyfus. Together, they created Human Remains and Violence: An Interdisciplinary Journal (Manchester University Press). Caroline’s research on genocide and atrocity crimes took an interdisciplinary turn to explore the dual use of forensic evidence in the investigation and prosecution of atrocity crimes and in the identification of victims and the building of post-atrocity memory.

She is currently working with Professor Mark A. Drumbl (Washington and Lee University, USA) on the aesthetics of atrocity prosecutions. Together, they published a blogtext on the aesthetics of the barely alive on trial at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. They also edited a special issue of the International Criminal Law Review on ‘The Visualities and Aesthetics of Prosecuting Aged Defendants’as well as Sights, Sounds, and Sensibilities of Atrocity Prosecutions, a volume that unlocks the look, sound, smell, taste, and feel of justice for massive human rights abuses and in which they co-wrote a chapter on the prosecution of Oskar Gröning, the ‘bookkeeper of Auschwitz’.

Email: C.I.Fournet2@exeter.ac.uk

Relevant publications

2024

M.A. Drumbl and C. Fournet, Sights, Sounds, and Sensibilities of Atrocity Prosecutions, Studies in International Criminal Law, Brill-Nijhoff Publishers, 2024.

2023

M.A. Drumbl and C. Fournet, ‘Verbrechen damals, Verfahren heute: Die Ästhetik, Akustik und Visualität der Strafverfolgung von Oskar Gröning’, in M. Vormbaum (ed.), Spätverfolgung von NS-Unrecht, Springer, 2023, 343-63.

C. Fournet, ‘Standing the Test of Time: The Dynamic Interpretation of the Genocide Convention’, in P. Behrens (ed.), Contemporary Challenges to Criminal Justice. Liber Amicorum for Ralph Henham, Hart Publishing, 2023, 267-282.

2022

C. Fournet, ‘The orchestrated inapplicability of the law of crimes against humanity and genocide – une exception française?’, in A. Graziosi and F. E. Sysyn (eds), Genocide – The Power and Problems of a Concept, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022, 174-199.

2020

C. Fournet, ‘‘Face to face with horror’: The Tomašica Mass Grave and the Trial of Ratko Mladić’, (2020) 6:2Human Remains and Violence 23-41.

2019

C. Fournet, ‘Nothing must remain: The (in)visibility of atrocity crimes and the perpetrators’ strategies using the corpses of their victims’, in A. Smeulers, M. Weerdesteijn, and B. Holá (eds), Perpetrators of International Crimes – Theories, Methods, and Evidence, Oxford University Press, 2019, 241-255.

2017

C. Fournet and C. Pégorier, ‘Combating genocide denial via law: État des lieux of anti-denial legislation’, in P. Behrens, O. Jensen, and N. Terry (eds), Holocaust and Genocide Denial – A Contextual Perspective, Routledge, 211-229.

2015

C. Fournet, ‘The Actus Reus of Genocide in the Croatia v. Serbia Judgment: Between Legality and Acceptability’, (2015) 28:4 Leiden Journal of International Law 915-21.

2013

C. Fournet, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity: Misconceptions and Confusion in French Law and Practice (Hart Publishing, 2013).

2012

C. Fournet, ‘The actus reus of genocide’, in P. Behrens and R. Henham (eds), Elements of Genocide, Routledge, 2012, 53-69.

2010

C. Fournet and C. Pégorier, ‘‘Only one Step Away from Genocide’: The Crime of Persecution in International Criminal Law’, (2010) 10:5 International Criminal Law Review 713-38.

2009

C. Fournet, ‘The universality of the prohibition of the crime of genocide, 1948-2008’, (2009) 19 International Criminal Justice Review 132-49.

2007

C. Fournet, The Crime of Destruction and the Law of Genocide: Their Impact on Collective Memory (Ashgate, 2007).

C. Fournet, ‘Reflection on the separation of powers: The law of genocide and the symptomatic French paradox’, in R. Henham and P. Behrens (eds), The Criminal Law of Genocide- International, Comparative and Contextual Aspects, Ashgate, 2007, 211-22.