Professor Fleur Johns
People_

Professor Fleur Johns

BA LLB (Melbourne) LLM SJD (Harvard) FASSA
Dean and Head of School
Address
F10 - Law School (Camperdown)
The University of Sydney
Professor Fleur Johns

Fleur Johns is a leading scholar of international law, with a particular focus on international law and technology, law and development, law and diplomacy, and international legal theory. Before rejoining Sydney Law School in 2025, Fleur was a Professor in the Faculty of Law & Justice at UNSW Sydney, where she held an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship. Fleur has also held visiting appointments in Europe, the UK, the US, and Canada (detailed below). She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2020 and elected twice (in 2018 and 2022) to the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Lawas well as serving on a range of other editorial boards listed below. Fleur is a graduate of Melbourne University (BA, LLB (Hons)) and Harvard University (LLM, SJD) and is admitted to the New York Bar, having practised law in New York for several years. At Harvard, she was a Menzies Scholar, awarded the Laylin Prize, and elected Commencement Speaker by her graduating LLM class.

Fleur has published six books, the most recent of which are #Help: Digital Humanitarianism and the Remaking of International Order(Oxford University Press, 2023) and Connection in a Divided World: Rethinking 'Community' in International Law(T.M.C. Asser Press, 2024). She also has a seventh book forthcoming entitled Global Governance by Data: Infrastructures of Algorithmic Rule(co-edited with Gavin Sullivan and Dimitri van den Meerssche, to be published by Cambridge University Press). In addition, Fleur has published articles in leading peer-reviewed journals in Australia, Canada, Europe, the UK, and the US, alongside other research publications in Asia and Latin America. Between 2005 and 2013, Fleur took three periods of parental leave and worked part-time (mainly 0.6 FTE).

  • International law
  • International legal theory
  • Law and society
  • Law and technology
  • Diplomacy

Fleur has taught across:

  • Public International Law
  • Private International Law
  • International Human Rights Law
  • International Legal Theory
  • Legal Ethics
  • International Project Finance.

Fleur has supervised masters, doctoral and postdoctoral research across all her areas of research interest listed above.

  • Barrister and Solicitor, New South Wales (not holder of a current practising certificate)
  • Attorney, State of New York, United States of America
  • Member, American Society of International Law
  • Member, European Society of International Law
  • Member, International Studies Association
  • Fellow of Trinity College, University of Melbourne, elected 2024
  • Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, elected 2020
  • Australian Research Council Future Fellow, 2021-2025
  • Fulbright Senior Scholar Award, Australian - American Fulbright Commission, 2019-20 (declined)
  • Member, School of Social Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 2019-20
  • Editorial Board, American Journal of International Law, since 2018; re-elected 2022
  • Editorial Board, Journal of Cross-disciplinary Research in Computational Law, 2023-2025
  • Editorial Board, Science, Technology & Human Values, since 2022
  • Editorial Board, North South Journal of Peace and Global Studies, since 2022
  • International Advisory Board, Hart/Bloomsbury Book Series: Shaping Law: Aesthetics, Value, History, since 2022
  • Editorial Board, Technology & Regulation, since 2019
  • Editorial Board, Routledge Book Series: Politics of Transnational Law, since 2015
  • Editorial Advisory Board, LondonReview of International Law, since 2013
  • Editorial Board, Leiden Journal of International Law, 2005-2013 (Articles Editor2005-2010 with Wouter Werner)
  • Editorial Board, Australian Journal of Human Rights, 2005-2015
  • Editorial Advisory Board, Australian Feminist Law Journal, since 2008
  • Editorial Board, Global Change, Peace & Security, 2008-2021
  • Editorial Board, Australian International Law Journal, 2008-2013

Publications

Books

  • Johns, F. (2024). Connection in a Divided World: Rethinking ‘Community’ in International Law. The Hague, The Netherlands: T.M.C. Asser Press. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2023). #Help: Digital Humanitarianism and the Remaking of International Order. New York: Oxford Academic. [More Information]
  • Boer, B., Hirsch, P., Johns, F., Saul, B., Scurrah, N. (2016). The Mekong: A Socio-legal Approach to River Basin Development. Abingdon: Routledge. [More Information]

Edited Books

  • Johns, F., Joyce, R., Sundhya, P. (2011). Events: The Force of International Law. Routledge-Cavendish.
  • Johns, F. (2010). International Legal Personality. United Kingdom: Ashgate.

Book Chapters

  • Johns, F. (2024). Critical International Legal Theory. In Jeffrey L. Dunoff, Mark A. Pollack (Eds.), International Legal Theory: Foundations and Frontiers, (pp. 133-152). Online: Cambridge University Press. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2024). Hope: An Epilogue. In Valerie Waldow, Pol Bargués, David Chandler (Eds.), Hope in the Anthropocene: Agency, Governance and Negation, (pp. 262-265). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. [More Information]
  • Johns, F., Grolman, L., Erol, G. (2022). Big Data and International Law (Revised and Updated). In Anthony Carty (Eds.), Oxford Bibliographies of International Law. Online: Oxford University Press. [More Information]

Journals

  • Engle, K., Johns, F., Riles, A. (2024). Introduction to the Symposium on International Laws Public and Private. AJIL Unbound, 118, 1-6. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2024). Rehoming Diplomacy: Privilege and Possibility in the International Law of Diplomatic Relations. University of Toronto Law Journal, 74, 69-93. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2023). Digital Humanitarian Mapping and the Limits of Imagination in International Law. Law and Critique, 34(3), 341-361. [More Information]

Reference Works

  • Johns, F. (2009). Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In Trisha Mann (Eds.), Australian Law Dictionary. Australia: Oxford University Press Australia.
  • Johns, F. (2009). Extraterritoriality. In Trisha Mann (Eds.), Australian Law Dictionary. Australia: Oxford University Press Australia.
  • Johns, F. (2009). International Bill of Rights. In Trisha Mann (Eds.), Australian Law Dictionary. Australia: Oxford University Press Australia.

2024

  • Johns, F. (2024). Connection in a Divided World: Rethinking ‘Community’ in International Law. The Hague, The Netherlands: T.M.C. Asser Press. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2024). Critical International Legal Theory. In Jeffrey L. Dunoff, Mark A. Pollack (Eds.), International Legal Theory: Foundations and Frontiers, (pp. 133-152). Online: Cambridge University Press. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2024). Hope: An Epilogue. In Valerie Waldow, Pol Bargués, David Chandler (Eds.), Hope in the Anthropocene: Agency, Governance and Negation, (pp. 262-265). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. [More Information]

2023

  • Johns, F. (2023). #Help: Digital Humanitarianism and the Remaking of International Order. New York: Oxford Academic. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2023). Digital Humanitarian Mapping and the Limits of Imagination in International Law. Law and Critique, 34(3), 341-361. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2023). Disastrous Law: International Law and the Shock-absorption of Disaster. American Journal of International Law, 117, 157-171. [More Information]

2022

  • Johns, F., Grolman, L., Erol, G. (2022). Big Data and International Law (Revised and Updated). In Anthony Carty (Eds.), Oxford Bibliographies of International Law. Online: Oxford University Press. [More Information]
  • Johns, F., Compton, C. (2022). Data jurisdictions and rival regimes of algorithmic regulation. Regulation and Governance, 16(1), 63-84. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2022). International Law and the Provocations of the Digital: The 2021 Annual Kirby Lecture in International Law. Australian Yearbook of International Law, 40(1), 3-22. [More Information]

2021

  • Johns, F. (2021). Centers and peripheries in a world of blockchain: An introduction to the symposium. AJIL Unbound, 115, 404-407. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2021). Disciplinary Privilege and the Promise of Decampment: A Response to James Thuo Gathii's 'The Promise of International Law: A Third World View'. Proceedings of the ASIL Annual Meeting, 114, 23-27. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2021). Governance by Data. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 17, 53-71. [More Information]

2020

  • Johns, F. (2020). Counting, countering and claiming the pandemic: digital practices, players, policies. In Linnet Taylor, Gargi Sharma, Aaron Martin, and Shazade Jameson (Eds.), Data Justice and COVID-19: Global Perspectives, (pp. 90-99). Online: Meatspace Press. [More Information]
  • Fourcade, M., Johns, F. (2020). Loops, ladders and links: the recursivity of social and machine learning. Theory and Society, 49(5-6), 803-832. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2020). Shadowboxing: the Data Shadows of Cold War International Law. In Matthew Craven, Sundhya Pahuja, Gerry Simpson, Anna Saunders (Eds.), International Law and the Cold War, (pp. 137-158). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [More Information]

2019

  • Johns, F. (2019). From Planning to Prototypes: New Ways of Seeing Like a State. The Modern Law Review, 82(5), 833-863. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2019). Legality. In Jean d’Aspremont and Sahib Singh (Eds.), Concepts for International Law: Contributions to Disciplinary Thought, (pp. 636-649). Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2019). War without words. AJIL Unbound, 113, 67-70. [More Information]

2018

  • Chan, J., Johns, F., Moses, L. (2018). Academic Metrics and Positioning Strategies. In Btihaj Ajana (Eds.), Metric Culture Ontologies of Self-Tracking Practices, (pp. 177-195). Leeds: Emerald Publishing Limited. [More Information]
  • Valverde, M., Johns, F., Raso, J. (2018). Governing Infrastructure in the Age of the “Art of the Deal”: Logics of Governance and Scales of Visibility. Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 41, 118-132. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2018). Things to Make and Do. In Jessie Hohmann and Daniel Joyce (Eds.), International Law's Objects, (pp. 47-56). Oxford: Oxford University Press. [More Information]

2017

  • Johns, F. (2017). Data Mining as Global Governance. In Roger Brownsword, Eloise Scotford, Karen Yeung (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Law, Regulation and Technology, (pp. 776-798). Oxford: Oxford University Press. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2017). Data, detection, and the redistribution of the sensible in international law. American Journal of International Law, 111(1), 57-103. [More Information]

2016

  • Johns, F., Riles, A. (2016). Beyond Bunker and Vaccine: The DNC Hack as a Conflict of Laws Issue. AJIL Unbound, 110, 347-351. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2016). Global governance through the pairing of list and algorithm. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 34(1), 126-149. [More Information]
  • Johns, F., Riles, A. (2016). Introduction to Symposium on Cybersecurity and the Changing International Law of Data. AJIL Unbound, 110, 335-336. [More Information]

2015

  • Johns, F. (2015). On failing forward: Neoliberal legality in the Mekong River Basin. Cornell International Law Journal, 48(2), 347-383.
  • Johns, F. (2015). Starting and Stopping Points: A Response to Stavros Gadinis. AJIL Unbound, 109, 39-43. [More Information]

2013

  • Johns, F. (2013). Non-Legality in International Law: Unruly Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2013). The deluge. London Review of International Law, 1(1), 9-34. [More Information]

2012

  • Johns, F. (2012). Living in International Law. In R Buchanan, S Motha & S Pahuja (Eds.), Reading Modern Law: Critical Methodologies and Sovereign Formations, (pp. 74-86). Oxon, United Kingdom: Routledge. [More Information]

2011

  • Johns, F., Joyce, R., Sundhya, P. (2011). Events: The Force of International Law. Routledge-Cavendish.
  • Johns, F. (2011). Financing as Governance. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 31(2), 391-415. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2011). Introduction. In Fleur Johns, Richard Joyce, Sundhya Pahuja (Eds.), Events: The Force of International Law, (pp. 1-17). Routledge-Cavendish. [More Information]

2010

  • Johns, F. (2010). International Legal Personality. United Kingdom: Ashgate.
  • Johns, F., Saul, B., Hirsch, P., Stephens, T., Boer, B. (2010). Law and the Mekong River Basin: A Socio-Legal Research Agenda on the Role of Hard and Soft Law in Regulating Transboundary Water Resources. Melbourne Journal of International Law, 11(1), 154-174.
  • Johns, F. (2010). The Gift of Realism: Julius Stone and the International Law Academy in Australia. In Helen Irving, Jacqueline Mowbray and Kevin Walton (Eds.), Julius Stone: A Study in Influence, (pp. 21-37). Sydney: The Federation Press.

2009

  • Johns, F. (2009). Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In Trisha Mann (Eds.), Australian Law Dictionary. Australia: Oxford University Press Australia.
  • Johns, F. (2009). Extraterritoriality. In Trisha Mann (Eds.), Australian Law Dictionary. Australia: Oxford University Press Australia.
  • Johns, F. (2009). International Bill of Rights. In Trisha Mann (Eds.), Australian Law Dictionary. Australia: Oxford University Press Australia.

2008

  • Johns, F. (2008). Performing Party Autonomy. Law and Contemporary Problems, 71(3), 243-271, not indexed 25/05/2010.

2007

  • Johns, F. (2007). Performing Power: The Deal, Corporate Rule, and the Constitution of Global Legal Order. In Stewart Motha (Eds.), Democracy's Empire: Sovereignty, Law, and Violence, (pp. 116-138). Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.
  • Johns, F. (2007). Performing Power: The Deal, Corporate Rule, and the Constitution of Global Legal Order. Journal of Law and Society, 34(1), 116-138. [More Information]
  • Johns, F., Freeland, S. (2007). Teaching International Law Across an Urban Divide: Reflections on an Improvisation. Journal of Legal Education, 57(4), 539-561.

2005

  • Johns, F. (2005). Critical Beings: Taking a Critical Bearing. Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy, 30, 160-170.
  • Johns, F. (2005). Guantanamo Bay and the Annihilation of the Exception. European Journal of International Law, 16(4), 613-635. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2005). Human Rights in the High Court of Australia, 1976-2003: The Righting of Australian Law? Federal Law Review, 33(2), 287-331.

2004

  • Johns, F. (2004). Global Governance: An Heretical History Play. Global Jurist, 4(2), 1-49. [More Information]
  • Johns, F. (2004). The madness of migration: Disquiet in the international law relating to refugees. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 27(6), 587-607. [More Information]

2003

  • Johns, F. (2003). Karen Knop, Diversity and Self-determination in International Law, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002, ISBN 0521781787,456 pp., £55.00. Leiden Journal of International Law, 16, 656-669. [More Information]

1995

  • Johns, F. (1995). Portrait of the Artist as a White Man: The International Law of Human Rights and Aboriginal Culture. Australian Yearbook of International Law, 16(1), 173-198.
  • Johns, F. (1995). The Invisibility of the Transnational Corporation: An Analysis of International Law and Legal Theory. Melbourne University Law Review, 19, 893-923.

Selected Grants

2010

  • Mekong Laws: Scales, Sites and Impacts of Hard and Soft Law in Mekong River Basin Governance, Johns F, Saul B, Hirsch P, Boer B, Australian Research Council (ARC)/Discovery Projects (DP)

2009

  • Teeming voids: the non-legal in public international law, Johns F, DVC Research/Brown Fellowships

International collaborations

Visiting Professorships/Fellowships that Fleur has taken up internationally include:

  • Dean’s Fellowship, Edinburgh Law School, University of Edinburgh, UK, Sept-Oct 2024 (by invitation)
  • Visiting Professor, University of Gothenburg School of Business, Economics & Law, Sweden, 2021-2024 (by invitation)
  • Shimizu Visiting Professor, Department of Law, The LSE, UK, Jan.-Feb.2017 (by invitation)
  • Visiting Fellow, European University Institute, Florence, Sept.-Oct. 2015 (by application)
  • Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, January 2014 (by invitation)
  • Leverhulme Trust Visiting Fellow (UK) 2005-2006, Birkbeck College, University of London (by invitation)