Secretary-General Appoints Robin Geiss of Germany Director of United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres today announced the appointment of Robin Geiss of Germany as Director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR).  He succeeds Renata Dwan of Ireland, to whom the Secretary-General expresses his gratitude for her dedicated service.

Mr. Geiss brings to the position close to 20 years of experience in peace and security, with a focus on the impact of new technologies in these areas.  Most recently, he served as Director of the Glasgow Centre for International Law and Security at the University of Glasgow, and as the Swiss Chair of International Humanitarian Law at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.  He is a Visiting Professor at the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po in Paris.

Mr. Geiss has managed large-scale research projects and held multiple posts in academia, including as Visiting Professor at the University of Vienna (2017), Distinguished Guest Professor at the Institute for International Peace and Armed Conflict in Bochum (2016) and Visiting Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin (2016).  He was a Professor of Public International and European Law at the University of Potsdam from 2011 to 2013, and Research Project Director for the Collaborative Research Center at the Freie Universität Berlin between 2014 and 2017.  He served as Legal Adviser for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Legal Division for Geneva/New York, from 2007 to 2010, and Geneva, from 2004 to 2005.

Mr. Geiss holds a PhD in law from the University of Kiel and obtained an LLM in international legal studies from New York University.