Qualifications:LL.B (Ebonyi State University Nigeria), B.L (Nigerian Law School Lagos), LL.M in Public International Law (Bournemouth University), PhD in Law (Bournemouth University), Fellow (UK Higher Education Academy)
Luke is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol Law School and a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. He is a member of the American Society of International Law (ASIL). He is also a member of the Research in Public International Law (RIPIL) Group at Bristol Law School and an external member of the Centre for the Study of Conflict, Emotion and Social Justice (CESJ) at Bournemouth University. Before joining UWE in September 2022, he taught law at UG & PG levels at Bournemouth University. He holds a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) Degree with 'First Class Honours' from Ebonyi State University, Nigeria (2013) and a Master of Laws (LL.M) Degree with 'Distinction' in Public International Law from Bournemouth University UK (2017). In May 2021, he gained a PhD in Law from Bournemouth University. Earlier in 2015, he earned his Barrister at Laws (B.L) Honours Degree from the Nigerian Law school, Lagos. He is a qualified Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. Before moving to the UK in 2016 to pursue his postgraduate studies, he practised law as a litigation attorney in Lagos. During that time, he gained significant experience in both civil and criminal litigation, representing numerous individual and corporate clients in the superior courts of records across Nigeria.
Luke is a recipient of many prestigious academic and scholarship awards. Among them: Attorney General of Ebonyi State award for 'best graduating student' in constitutional law, Ebonyi State University (2015); Fully Funded Abakaliki Local government Area Ebonyi State Nigeria Undergraduate Scholarship award for academic excellence (2009-2013); the highly prestigious Fully Funded British Government Commonwealth Shared Scholarship award for Master’s study tenable at Bournemouth University (2016-2017); and a highly competitive Fully Funded Open Call PhD Studentship for his winning PhD research proposal on 'Missing Migrants' in International Law (selected out of 90 applicants) awarded by Bournemouth University (2017-2021). In February 2022, he received the UK Global Talent Recognition as an 'Emerging Global Leader in the Field of Law' following a successful endorsement by the British Academy.
Area of expertise
Luke's research interests lie generally in Public International Law, focusing on various areas, including General Principles of International Law and Institutions, International Human Rights Law, International Migration and Refugee Law, International Humanitarian Law, International Criminal Law and Justice, Transitional Justice and Transnational Law. Specifically, in the field of ICL, his research explores how the domestic implementation of the complementarity principle of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court within the African national legal orders and the African Union can end impunity for international crimes in Africa. In May 2020, his research (with S-D Bachmann) in this ICL field published in the Brooklyn Journal of International Law was cited twice before the ICC in The Hague in regard to the Situation in Central African Republic II (The Prosecutor v Alfred Yekatom and Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona). In the field of international migration and refugee law, his research explores questions around refugee status determination procedures, migration policies, migration governance, missing migrants and the global migration and refugee crisis in a wider sense.
In the area of international human rights law and global security, he is currently exploring new research themes around the interface between international human rights law and state counterterrorism measures and how certain state-invented counterterrorism doctrines attempt to limit the applicability of international law rules/norms to such measures. He is also currently researching the international history of modern human rights in an African jurisdictional context and its interconnections with the development of human rights and constitutionalism in Great Britain. He seeks to understand how the universalist claims of western positive law that it has replaced the erstwhile pre-human legal order in primitive societies now sit tight at the heart of modern discourses on the international history of human rights in the world. His research feeds into the deeper philosophical thoughts that attempt to connect the emerging forms of international legal enforcement to a historical or philosophical foundation from where the widely professed emancipatory and redemptive power of human rights is said to derive its validity and origin. He has presented research papers in these areas of law at high-level international conferences in the world, including at Oxford and Cambridge.
PhD Supervision
Luke welcomes PhD proposals exploring the field of international migration and refugee law, more specifically refugee status determination procedures, migration policies, migration governance and missing migrants from interdisciplinary perspectives. Proposals that employ theoretical and methodological innovations to connect questions of international law with biopolitics, history, normative political philosophy, phenomenology, psychosocial science and literature and literary studies are particularly welcome.
Proposals that explore emergent and understudied questions of international human rights law and international criminal law, as well as the interconnections between refugee protection, refugee exclusion and accountability for international crimes are also welcome.
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