Valerie Oosterveld

Valerie Oosterveld is a full Professor at Western University’s Faculty Law and the Western Research Chair in International Criminal Justice. Her research and writing focus on gender issues within international criminal law (and, more recently, outer space law). She has published widely on the concept of gender in international criminal law, the interpretation of sexual and gender-based crimes by international criminal tribunals, and gender-sensitive investigation and prosecution of these crimes. She is also a faculty member of Western’s Institute for Earth and Space Exploration.

Professor Oosterveld was awarded the 2023 Canadian Association of Law Teachers Academic Excellence Award and the 2022 Royal Society of Canada Ursula Franklin Award in Gender Studies. Previously, she was a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists from 2014-2021 and was awarded Western University’s Faculty Scholar designation from 2017-2019. Her co-edited volume (with Indira Rosenthal and Susana SáCouto), Gender in International Criminal Law (Oxford University Press, 2022), was awarded the 2023 American Society of International Law Women in International Law Interest Group's Scholarship Prize for Best Book.

Professor Oosterveld is the Acting Director of Western University’s Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction. She is also a member of the SSHRC-funded Canadian Partnership for International Justice, which was awarded the 2023 Governor-General’s Innovation Award and the 2022 SSHRC Impact Partnership Award. She served as an Associate Dean at Western Law from 2014-2018.

Before joining the Faculty of Law in 2005, Valerie served in the Legal Affairs Bureau of Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. In this role, she provided legal advice on international criminal accountability for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, especially with respect to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. She served on the Canadian delegation to various ICC-related negotiations, including the Assembly of States Parties.

In 1998, she was a member of the Canadian delegation to UN Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an ICC. In this role, she negotiated various gender provisions, as Canada played a leading role in pressing for a gender-sensitive Rome Statute. In 2010, she served on the Canadian delegation to the Review Conference of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in Kampala, Uganda.

She earned her JSD and LL.M. from Columbia Law School, her LL.B. from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, and her B.Soc.Sc. from the University of Ottawa.