Melland Schill Lecture Series

As part of our research, we have revived the prestigious Melland Schill Lectures, a historical series of public lectures dealing with international law.

The Melland Schill Lectures were first launched in 1961 by Professor Ben Atkinson Wortley as a public forum for reflection on international law. After a forty-year hiatus, the series was revived in 2014 under the auspices of the Manchester International Law Centre. Each lecture is delivered by a distinguished scholar or practitioner and subsequently published or made available online.

Recent lectures

• 19 November 2025: Nehal Bhuta, George Galindo, and Megan Donaldson, 2025 Melland Schill Roundtable: ‘Who Governs When the World Is Falling Apart?’
• 12 November 2024: Arnulf Becker Lorca, ‘Deceiving the hopes of humanity? Withdrawing from the United Nations’
• 15 May 2023: Horatia Muir Watt, ‘Alterity on trial: How does law (modern, Western) deal with alterity?’
• 8 April 2022: Martti Koskenniemi, ‘Legal imagination and the history of international power’
• 14 September 2018: Jan Klabbers, ‘On universalism and epistemic universalism’ (delivered as part of the ESIL annual conference hosted by The University of Manchester)
• 22 November 2017: Sir Michael Wood, ‘Immunity of state officials’
• 1 February 2016: Sir Michael Wood, ‘Remarks on the importance of “teachings” in international law, with particular reference to the Melland Schill Lecture Series’
• 5 May 2016: Judge Xue Hanqin, ‘The cultural element in international law’
• 15 October 2014: John Dugard, ‘Are existing states sacrosanct?’