Rebecca Hamilton is a Professor of Law at American University, Washington College of Law (WCL), where her teaching & scholarship focus on national security law, international law, and human rights law. She was the 2025 Scholar/Teacher of the Year at American University. She is the Co-Chair of the 2027 American Society of International Law annual meeting, she was a 2024 U.S. Fulbright Scholar, and a Fall 2023 Visiting Professor of Law at UCLA Law. She is an Executive Editor at Just Security, and is an internationally recognized expert on atrocity prevention. Her research explores the structural factors underlying international crimes, including the role of new technologies and the impact of climate change. Her work draws on her experience in the prosecution of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, as well as her work in conflict zones as a foreign correspondent. She is the author of Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide (Palgrave Macmillan) which analyzes citizen activism and the effort to stop mass atrocities.

Bec previously served as a lawyer in the prosecutorial division of the International Criminal Court, working on cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Uganda and Sudan. She has also worked in the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and has been the Deputy Director of the Bernstein Institute for Human Rights at NYU School of Law.

After growing up in and on the ocean in Aotearoa and Australia, she recently became an open water ultra-marathon swimmer. In 2024, she swam from Switzerland to France across Lake Geneva, and in 2026 she became the 10th woman to complete the Maui Nui multi-channel Pacific Ocean swim, covering over 40 miles over 3 consequtive days, swimming between the islands of Maui, Lana’i and Moloka’i, and raising funds for wildfire recovery.

Prior to entering academia Bec worked as a journalist for the Washington Post, and Reuters. A Pulitzer Center grantee, and former fellow at New America and at Open Society Foundations, she has also written for Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, International Herald Tribune, and The New Republic. She has appeared on PBS Newshour, NPR, BBC, Al-Jazeera, and other media outlets.

Professor Hamilton is a member of the New York Bar, the American Society of International Law, and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is a proud first generation high school and college graduate. She received her J.D from Harvard Law School and M.P.P from Harvard Kennedy School. A graduate of the University of Sydney, she was born in Aotearoa, NZ. She lives in Washington D.C. with her husband and four children.