Kim Thuy Seelinger is an expert on sexual violence in armed conflict and forced displacement. She has conducted several studies focused on systems of protection and accountability in Central America, the Mediterranean, and North and Sub-Saharan Africa. This work has been integrated into global guidance for humanitarian response as well as the investigation of conflict-related sexual violence.
Seelinger connects the Brown School to Washington University School Law School, where she is a visiting professor. She also directs the University-wide Center for Human Rights, Gender and Migration under the umbrella of the Institute for Public Health.
Seelinger has served on the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ Advisory Group on Gender, Forced Displacement, and Protection and was an expert contributor for the UK government’s International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict (2014, 2017). She is currently a technical advisor for the Global Survivors’ Fund, established by 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winners Dr. Denis Mukwege and Ms. Nadia Murad.
Seelinger’s writing appears in diverse journals such as the Journal of International Criminal Justice, the California Law Review (online), the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post, and PLOS Medicine. She co-edited “The President on Trial: Prosecuting Hissène Habré” (Oxford Univ. Press, 2020) and has won various honors for her work, including a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency (2015).
Before joining the Law School, Seelinger taught at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where she directed the Sexual Violence Program at the Human Rights Center (2010-2019).
