Natalie R. Davidson
Ph.D.
Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor)
Tel Aviv University
Buchmann Faculty of Law
I research and teach International Human Rights Law, Constitutional Law, and Law & Society. My work explores different facets of the relationship between law and violence, including international law's conceptualization of violence, the regulation of the global arms trade and authoritarian uses of law.
I grew up French and American, mostly in France. After law studies at King's College London, Université Paris I and the LSE, I moved to Israel where I worked as a corporate lawyer and then wrote my doctoral dissertation at the Tel Aviv University Buchmann Faculty of Law. After visiting and postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Texas Austin Rapoport Center for Human Rights and the Minerva Center for Human Rights at Hebrew University, in 2017 I joined the Buchmann Faculty of Law.
My page at Tel Aviv University, including a full CV, is here.
Areas of Research
International Human Rights Law
International Criminal Law
The regulation of the global arms trade
Security Exports from Israel
Constitutional Law
Law and Society
My research explores the complex relations between law and violence: how law addresses past and ongoing violence; how to resolve conflicts between legal justice and political processes such as peacemaking or transitions to democracy; how non-democratic regimes use law to justify violence; how law regulates, constrains and enables the international trade in weapons; and the dilemmas created for members of the legal profession by the contradictory roles of law in relation to violence. I have explored facets of the law/violence relationship in the fields of International Human Rights Law, International Criminal Law, Transitional Justice, Tort Law and Constitutional Law, drawing on theoretical perspective deriving primarily from Law & Society, and employing empirical and analytical methodologies.