Harrison Otieno Mbori

Biography

Harrison Otieno Mbori is the current William and Patricia Kleh Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Law at Boston University School of Law (2026-2027). He joins BU Law from Kabarak University School of Law in Kenya, where he is a Senior Lecturer and Associate Dean. His research and teaching are principally in international economic law, public international law, international trade and investment law, business and human rights, international environmental law, and comparative constitutional law. His scholarship examines broader questions of international law, economic governance, development, and legal institutions, using Africa and the global South generally as vital sites of inquiry. His work draws significantly on Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), alongside socio-legal and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of international law. Professor Mbori was also previously a Senior Researcher at the Luxembourg Centre for European Law (LCEL) at the University of Luxembourg (formerly Max Planck Institute for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law), where he conducted research in international procedural law focusing on African international courts and tribunals.

Professor Mbori is the author of International Economic Dispute Settlement in Africa: Courts and Arbitral Tribunals as Socio-Legal Actors. The book examines the work of African international courts and arbitral tribunals in the settlement of economic disputes applying a socio-legal analytical lens. His research more broadly has addressed international trade and investment law, African regional integration, international courts and tribunals, sovereign debt, development, and the position of African states within international economic governance. A recurring theme in his scholarship is how international law generally, and international economic law specifically is experienced and shaped outside its traditional centres of power in global North capitals like New York, Geneva, and Paris. His scholarship positions African and global South states, cities, localities, institutions, courts, lawyers, and other actors as active generators, confronters, and resisting nodes of international law in its development and practice. His scholarship has also focused on sovereign inequalities and the impact of race and racism on the international law institutional governance. He has recently published this line of scholarship in the edited volume Emancipating International Law: Confronting the Violence of Racilaized Boundaries.

Alongside his teaching and research, Professor Mbori serves as Managing Editor of AJIL Unbound, the online publication of the American Journal of International Law. He is also an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya and has appeared as counsel before the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights, the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) and Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Court of Justice. His academic and professional work has therefore combined scholarship and teaching with legal practice, academic administration, editorial work, and engagement with international and regional legal institutions. At BU Law, his teaching and research will build on these interests in international economic law, dispute settlement, development, and the changing role of Africa in the international legal order.