About Talita

Talita Dias is the Shaw Foundation Junior Research Fellow in Law at Jesus College, Oxford, as well as a Research Fellow with ELAC. Her current research interests include online hate speech, the application of international law to new technologies, such as the Internet and artificial intelligence, and due diligence standards. Talita is also a Lecturer in Criminal Law on the Law Mods/FHS course at St Catherine’s College (Oxford). She is a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and has previously taught public international law and international criminal law at Oxford and Royal Holloway, University of London.

Talita completed a DPhil in Law at the University of Oxford in 2019. Her thesis, entitled ‘Retroactive Recharacterisation of Crimes and the Principles of Legality and Fair Labelling in International Criminal Law’, was awarded a Special Mention of the English-Speaking René Cassin – International Institute of Human Rights 2020 Thesis Prize. Some of her research findings were published in the Journal of International Criminal Justice, the International Criminal Law Review, the Journal of Conflict and Security Law and the Human Rights Law Review. Her article ‘The retroactive application of the Rome Statute in cases of Security Council referrals and ad hoc declarations: an appraisal of the existing solutions to an under- discussed problem’ was also the recipient of the 2018 Journal of International Criminal Justice Prize. Talita’s DPhil was supervised by Professor Dapo Akande and generously funded by the Planethood Foundation and the Law Faculty’s Sir Roy Goode Scholarship and Graduate Assistant Fund.

In 2015, Talita obtained a Magister Juris (MJur) degree from the University of Oxford with Distinction. She was awarded the Clifford Chance Prize for Best Overall Performance in the MJur, the Law Faculty Prize for Best Exam Paper in International Law and Armed Conflict, as well as the Principal’s Prize and Archibald Jackson Prize for Academic Excellence, both awarded by Somerville College.Her MJur Dissertation looked at the extent of prosecutorial discretion in international criminal law, particularly with regards to peace and security considerations and alternative justice mechanisms. It has led to the article “‘Interests of justice’: Defining the scope of Prosecutorial discretion in Article 53 (1)(c) and 2(c) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court”, published in the Leiden Journal of International Law in 2017.

In 2015/2016, Talita worked for Judge Olga Herrera Carbuccia at the International Criminal Court, under the sponsorship of the Oxford Global Justice Internship Program and the Planethood Foundation. She is a qualified lawyer in Brazil where she has previously worked as a Criminal and Family Law Clerk. Talita did her undergraduate studies in law at the Federal University of Pernambuco with a year abroad in France, where she attended Sciences Po-Lille and Université Pierre-Mendès (Grenoble, France).