Author Archives: Boyd van Dijk

About Boyd van Dijk

Boyd van Dijk is a doctoral candidate at the European University Institute in Florence. He holds an M.A. in modern European history from Columbia University. His first book, Leven naast het kamp, Kamp Vught en de Vughtenaren, 1942-1944 (Houten, 2013), examines how the neighbors of KL Herzogenbusch responded to its presence, and vice versa. The thesis on which this book was based won the 2012 Erik Hazelhoff Jong Talent Prijs and was shortlisted for the 2011 De Volkskrant-IISH Award. He is currently working on a new international history of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

Refractions of Humanity in Warfare

August 21, 2019 by
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This post is part of a symposium on Jessica Whyte’s essay “The ‘Dangerous Concept of the Just War.’” All contributions to the symposium can be found here. In her essay Jessica Whyte makes a fascinating intervention in the age-old debate on the origins of international humanitarian law (IHL) and its relationship with just war theory. In challenging Western-centered explanations, Whyte’s essay offers an intriguing perspective on the role of anti-colonial actors in IHL’s making, which is the focus of this review of her work. Unlike Continue reading →

The Laws of War: A Scrap of Paper?

August 3, 2016 by
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Law and War edited by Austin Sarat, Lawrence Douglas, and Martha Merrill Umphrey Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2014. xi + 235 pp. A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War Isabel V. Hull In September 2011, a squadron of American Predator drones took off from an airfield in Saudi Arabia. While flying across the Yemenite border, they spotted their main target: Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born member, according to U.S. officials, of Al Qaeda. Within minutes, an operator had fired Continue reading → Continue reading →