Lawyering Peace

In this episode of Lawyering Peace, Dr. Paul Williams speaks with Kat Fotovat, a global expert on gender, artificial intelligence, and international security, to explore how technological disruption and shifting power structures are reshaping the role of women in peacebuilding.

Drawing on two decades of experience across conflict and post conflict settings, Kat reflects on the evolution of gender policy within international institutions and the growing challenges facing women peacebuilders today. She outlines the core dimensions of gender work, including prevention of violence, protection of rights, and the promotion of women’s participation across political and economic life.

The conversation then turns to the accelerating impact of artificial intelligence. Kat explains how AI is already being used both to empower and to target women, from enhancing advocacy and early warning systems to enabling harassment through deepfakes and disinformation. She shares how her organization, Peace Pays, is working to equip women peacebuilders with the tools, training, and safeguards needed to operate effectively in this new environment.

Looking ahead, Kat examines the broader paradigm shift underway in the global order, including the growing influence of private technology companies and the implications for international norms and governance. She introduces the concept of embedding a “maternal instinct” into AI systems as a way to promote empathy, safety, and human centered outcomes.

This episode offers a forward looking perspective on the intersection of gender, technology, and power, and what it will take to ensure that the next generation of global systems remains inclusive, effective, and grounded in human rights.

In this episode of Lawyering Peace, Dr. Paul Williams sits down with Dr. Łukasz Adamski, historian, political scientist, and Deputy Director of the Mieroszewski Dialogue Centre, to discuss the profound historical and political shifts redefining Eastern Europe’s role in the global order.

They discuss why 70 to 80 percent of modern politics is actually a discussion about history, how Poland’s "deep trauma" of 1939 shapes its current skepticism toward international security guarantees, and whether the European Union can ever truly function as a global superpower without a unified public opinion or a federalized military. Dr. Adamski also reflects on his work advising President Zelenskyy’s team and why the current paradigm shift is moving the region away from a reliance on law toward a necessary focus on military self-reliance.

In this episode of Lawyering Peace, Dr. Paul Williams sits down with two prominent former senior Mexican diplomats, Ambassador Rubén Beltrán and Ambassador Jorge Lomónaco, to examine Mexico's place in the shifting global order and the difficult choices it faces as a rising middle power caught between geography, history, and a transforming international system.

They discuss why Mexico sits between a rock and a hard place in its relationship with the United States, how Latin America's deep fragmentation limits Mexico's regional ambitions, and whether the window for meaningful diversification is already closing or just beginning to open.

In this episode of Lawyering Peace, Dr. Paul Williams sits down with Dr. Kushtrim Istrefi, Senior Peace Fellow at PILPG, Associate Professor of Public International Law and Human Rights at Utrecht University, and substitute member of the Venice Commission, to interrogate whether the rules-based international order is fracturing, evolving, or simply revealing what it always was.

They discuss why Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the recent policies of the Trump administration represent two distinct but compounding shocks to the system of international law, whether the global order was ever truly rules-based or always an imperfect architecture serving the powerful, and why human rights sit at the most exposed frontline of the current paradigm shift.

In this episode of Lawyering Peace, Dr. Paul Williams sits down with Dr. Mitat Çelikpala, Professor of International Relations and Dean of the Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, to examine Türkiye’s evolving role at the center of the global paradigm shift.

They discuss why the Black Sea has become the defining microcosm of great power competition, how Türkiye’s transactional foreign policy is reshaping the balance of power from Syria to the Caucasus, and whether Türkiye’s century-long modernization story still points toward Europe or somewhere else entirely.

In this episode of Lawyering Peace, Dr. Paul Williams sits down with Dr. Maria Mälksoo, Professor of International Relations at the University of Copenhagen and one of Europe's leading scholars on memory, identity, and security politics, to make sense of the paradigm shift reshaping global order right now.

They discuss why the collapse of shared ritual and legal norms may be more dangerous than it appears, whether Europe's strategic awakening is enough, and why AI has become a sovereign actor that no existing accountability structure was built to handle. And the question threading through all of it: for whom is this moment a crisis, and for whom is it an opportunity?

Does war suspend our commitment to human rights or test it?

In this episode of Lawyering Peace, host Dr. Paul Williams speaks with Dr. Taras Leshkovych of the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine at OHCHR about documenting violations during active conflict. They discuss how the human rights landscape has evolved since 2014, the impact of the 2022 full scale invasion, conditions in occupied territories, digital evidence in reporting, and why rigorous documentation today is essential for future accountability.

In this episode of Lawyering Peace, Dr. Paul Williams sits down with David Crane, Senior Peace Fellow at PILPG, to discuss the evolving global order, the role of international law, and the future of accountability for atrocity crimes.

Drawing on more than 40 years of experience as a U.S. Army officer, Judge Advocate, and founding Chief Prosecutor of the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone, David reflects on the post-WWII system, paradigm shifts in global power, and how a smarter, more effective UN could respond to 21st-century crises. He offers a practitioner’s perspective on the resilience of accountability norms and the possibilities for strengthening international institutions and regional cooperation in turbulent times.

In this episode of Lawyering Peace, Dr. Paul R. Williams speaks with Tyler Thompson about the future of negotiations and the role of artificial intelligence in complex high-stakes processes. 

Tyler Thompson is a PILPG Peace Fellow, a peace negotiator, legal advisor, and senior government official with nearly two decades of experience advising on complex negotiations across both public and private sectors. At PILPG, he served as Legal Counsel, directed the Ceasefires Practice Area, and advised state and non-state parties in peace negotiations. He successfully opened PILPG’s office in Libya and led its office in Kosovo. He is now co-founder and Chief Negotiation Officer of Expeditionary, an applied AI research and advisory company reimagining negotiation design and execution.

The conversation explores how negotiation landscapes have evolved, the challenges of high-stakes, multi-stakeholder environments, and how AI can augment, but not replace, human judgment. Tyler walks through lessons from his career, including strategy design, stakeholder mapping, mitigating blind spots, and building trust in conflict-affected and corporate environments. The episode also highlights how Expeditionary, the AI research and advisory company he co-founded, supports intelligence synthesis, coordinated execution, and ethical decision-making in negotiations, while keeping humans central to the process.

In this episode of Lawyering Peace, Dr. Paul R. Williams speaks with Dr. Marieke de Hoon about the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 and the long road to accountability for the 298 civilians murdered on July 17, 2014.

Dr. de Hoon is Professor of International Criminal Justice at the University of Amsterdam and Director of PILPGs Netherlands Office. She has worked closely on legal analysis connected to MH17 and has supported families seeking justice and clarity over more than a decade.

The conversation traces how multiple legal pathways have built a record of accountability, including the Joint Investigation Team, the Dutch criminal trial and convictions issued in November 2022, inter state proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights, and the aviation law track through ICAO, including the ongoing appeal at the International Court of Justice. The episode also explores why truth finding, victim recognition, and a durable historical record matter in an era of disinformation and continued aggression.