https://twitter.com/ralphwilde

Ralph welcomes enquiries from prospective doctoral students. He is a Faculty member, UCL Faculty of Laws, and Affiliated Staff Member, UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation. He is an expert in public international law, including international human rights law, and the interface between international law and related disciplines, including international relations, history, legal and political theory generally and critical, feminist and post-colonial theory in particular. His CV is linked on this page.

Ralph’s research has focused on the administration of territory by international organizations and the concept of trusteeship in international law and public policy. His book, International Territorial Administration: How Trusteeship and the Civilizing Mission Never Went Away (OUP), won the Certificate of Merit (prize) of the American Society of International Law. He is currently continuing his work on the extraterritorial application of human rights law leading the ‘Human Rights Beyond Borders’ project (see 'Research Activities'). Ralph also works on international law issues relating to the Israel-Palestine situation, for which he has been awarded a Research Fellowship by the British Academy Council for British Research on the Levant. In 2022 Ralph was awarded the Åland Islands Peace Institute Peace Fellowship, as a recognition of "outstanding and long-lasting work both in the Israel - Palestine context but also for other occupied, internationally administered and/or disputed territories which are several in our tormented world".

More generally, Ralph’s research covers the following: general international law; international human rights law; colonialism, occupation, the League of Nations Mandate System and the UN Trusteeship System, ‘state-building’ and ‘post-conflict reconstruction’; international support for constitutional reform and constitution-making, and human rights-based legal reforms generally, in 'post-conflict'/'transitional' states; forced migration, including refugees and IDPs; the administration of refugee/IDP camps by UNHCR; international organizations, including the UN, notably legal responsibility, applicable law, immunities and reform; human rights law and overseas aid policy; the relationship between different areas of international law; international legal theory; state immunity and its interface with international criminal law and international human rights law; the jurisdiction of the ICC human rights law in wartime and occupation situations, and its relationship to the law of armed conflict, occupation law, and rights/obligations emanating from UN Security Council resolutions; the law and practice of statehood and recognition of statehood, generally and relating to the former Yugoslavia, notably Kosovo; international interventions in the former Yugoslavia, especially Bosnia and Herzegovina, Eastern Slavonia and Kosovo; East Timor; Western Sahara; the Palestinian Territories; Jerusalem; West Irian; Leticia, Danzig and the Saar in the 1920s-30s; the Congo in the 1960s; South West Africa/Namibia.

Ralph has been awarded grants from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy and the Nuffield Foundation, and a Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. In 2010, the Leverhulme Trust awarded him a Philip Leverhulme Prize, for UK-based academics under 40 judged to be ‘outstanding scholars who have made a substantial and recognized contribution to their particular field of study, recognized at an international level’. In 2012 Ralph was awarded a €1.1 million Research Frontier Grant from the European Research Council, funding the first phase of the ‘Human Rights Beyond Borders’ project, completed in 2021.  In 2021 he was awarded the annual Best Paper in International Law Prize by the International Studies Association.