Cornell Law School has announced that Afroditi Giovanopoulou will be joining the faculty, first as a visiting assistant professor in spring of 2024, and then as an assistant professor in the fall of 2024. She will teach in the areas of international law, legal history, property, and legal thought.

Afroditi Giovanopoulou

Giovanopoulou’s research lies at the intersection of law and history, with a dual focus on the history of American legal thought and the legal history of international politics. She studies the historical, political, and jurisprudential interconnections between public and private law, as well as the ways in which legal doctrine, practice, and theory have structured the rise of the United States in the world. Some of her recent works have explored the cultural and intellectual history of American legal education after World War II, competing conceptions of sovereignty in American legal thought, and the influence of sociological jurisprudence on American foreign policy.

“I am delighted to be joining Cornell Law School and to help continue the school’s rigorous tradition in international legal studies,” says Giovanopoulou. “I hope to contribute to Cornell’s wonderful intellectual community to the best of my abilities.”

“The hiring of Afroditi Giovanopoulou will continue the legacy of Cornell Law School as a world leader in international law,” says Jens Ohlin, Allan R. Tessler Dean and Professor of Law. “Since the founding of this law school, its members have been committed to the rule of law at the international level, and our students today receive a wide education in not just public international law but many other subdisciplines that are indispensable for today’s legal practice. As a historian, Afroditi’s research is profound, timely, and timeless.”

Giovanopoulou holds an S.J.D. from Harvard Law School, an M.Phil. and M.A. in history from Columbia University, and an LL.B. and LL.M. from the Aristotle University Law School, in Thessaloniki, Greece, and she is presently a Ph.D. candidate in International and Global History at Columbia University. Her research has been supported by, among others, the Fulbright Foundation, the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. She currently teaches at Florida State University College of Law.

Recent publications by Giovanopoulou include “Who Owns the Critical Vision in International Legal History?: Reflections on Anne Orford’s International Law and the Politics of History,” in the Temple International and Comparative Law Journal; “Pragmatic Legalism: Revisiting America’s Order After World War II,” in the Harvard International Law Journal; and “Between Managerialism and the Legal Counterculture: The Yale Program in Law and Modernization in the History of the Global 1970s,” in the Journal of Institutional Studies.