By Otto Spijkers

My fellow-blogger just introduced us to what indeed seems a wonderful conference on International Law and Armed Conflict. This gave me the idea also to advertise for a conference where I will be presenting my research: the Second Global International Studies Conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The programme of the conference is somewhat overwhelming. I didn’t count, but there seem to be hundreds of presentations scheduled over a period of three days in Ljubljana. I have never been to Ljubljana, so I very much look forward to exploring what seems to be a wonderful city. The theme of the conference is What keeps us apart, what keeps us together? International Order, Justice, Values. I am particularly interested in global values, which is the topic of the PhD I am currently working on, provisionally entitled The United Nations and the Evolution of Global Values. The attempt to find a global legal structure, using the approach of international constitutionalism (where we can distinguish the UN-Charter-as-constitution approach and more flexible approaches), and concepts such as global values, jus cogens, erga omnes, international crimes, is a ‘hot topic’ at the moment in international law. UPDATE: I added a link to the latest version of the programme.