Lecture summary: Commander Ian Park (Royal Navy International Law Legal Adviser) will offer a view on the role of the military legal adviser during armed conflict and peacetime military operations. He will consider recent armed conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, and Royal Navy peacetime military operations in the Arabian Gulf and Mediterranean.

Commander Ian Park is a logistics officer and barrister in the Royal Navy and has served in seven ships and deployed worldwide in support of the Royal Navy’s contribution to defence. He has also deployed as a legal adviser on operations to Afghanistan and, on many occasions, to the Middle East. Ian is, or has been, a Hudson Fellow at Oxford University, a Visiting Fellow at Harvard Law School, a First Sea Lord’s Fellow and a Freeman of the City of London. He is a graduate of St. John’s College, Cambridge, has a doctorate in law from Balliol College, Oxford and has lectured at Harvard Law School, Cambridge University, Oxford University, The Academy of Military Sciences, Beijing, Hanoi University, USSH Hanoi and Freiburg University amongst other institutions. Ian is the author of, inter alia, ‘The Right to Life in Armed Conflict’ (Oxford University Press, 2018) and in 2018 was the winner of the outstanding performance by an HM Forces barrister at the UK Bar Awards.