For the 2020 World Disasters Report, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) compiled and analyzed disaster data since the 1960s, looking globally at the number and type of disasters, the number of people affected and how and where and reviewing how this has changed over time. When looking at the trends in disaster data, the impact of climate crisis is clear.

My current research looks at ways in which people and institutions are using technology to build the evidentiary record in international criminal litigation. In particular, I focus on the collection of, and reliance on, what I call user-generated evidence. This is footage that an ordinary citizen—the user—records on their smartphone, in an effort to achieve legal accountability.

I am deeply grateful to the American Society of International Law—especially to its president, Lucinda Low—and to the International Legal Studies Program at American University Washington College of Law—in particular, to the Dean of the College, Camille Nelson, and to its program director, David Hunter—for their generous invitation to deliver the nineteenth Annual Grotius Lecture. Grateful, but more than a little intimidated. Nobel laureates and heads of state, eminent judges and leading diplomats have given this distinguished lecture, but never, I think, a humble historian. As Isaac Newton might have said were he in my shoes, “[i]f I can see far, it is because I stand on the shoulders of these giants.”