91�첥

Wishing to continue from a PhD to a four-year Research Fellowship at 91�첥 seemed natural for (Law 2016).

Orfeas was a recipient of the at Caius, which followed his undergraduate degree at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, his LLM in Athens and his LLM in International Legal Studies at New York University. He was elected as a in October 2021.

“I was so in love with the subject, I’m struggling to remember a time when I consciously decided on that (a career in academia),” Orfeas says. “I’ve always liked thinking, theorising and communicating what I’ve found. It seemed like a natural progression and I’ve been fortunate to have support of mentors.

“The PhD was a big turning point for me. I didn’t expect to enjoy it so much. In a Masters you have a reading list; in a PhD you create your own reading list. It was fun, daunting in some ways, and overall gave me an intellectual craving I could not have predicted.”

Orfeas’ parents are both lawyers and he has practical experience, as an intern at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, as an assistant to the British Special Rapporteur at the UN International Law Commission in Geneva and latterly as a consultant with international organisations.

He describes himself as a generalist of international law, tackling foundational issues that cut across many sectors: international human rights, trade, investment, laws of war… to name a few.

Public international law governs relations between states and has foundational theoretical elements, such as principles. Orfeas lectures University of Cambridge undergraduates on statehood and self-determination. In the ever-changing global climate, these issues are highly topical with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza and wars elsewhere.

His specialisation takes in the Law of International Organisations: The United Nations, International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and many other intergovernmental such organisations.

“I'm looking at these governmental institutions that are not themselves states, but they're not quite non state actors – not quite like an Non-Governmental Organisation – and how they interact with states as well as individuals, and what laws should govern their activities,” Orfeas says.

“There’s no legislator. It is always constantly informed by what happens on the ground. The idea is to look at it in a diligent manner and ask: what can this body of knowledge contribute to that problem? What solutions can we find?

“In certain situations, some things are illegal, and that is almost universally agreed. Because the system is decentralised, there’s no police station or centralised judiciary – and that’s fine as a condition of a system.”

Orfeas cites unilateral interference from some nations in others’ affairs as problematic, such as the occupation of/war in Afghanistan led by the United States and its allies. “When states have acted like sheriffs, it hasn’t ended well for any party,” he adds.

“International law is not perfect, but it generally following it increases the chances that one is on the right side of history, broadly speaking,” adds Orfeas, who acknowledges there have been failures too.

His PhD took off from an age-old doctrinal problem: which customary norms cover an international organisation, when it is not bound by a given treaty?

“At the heart of that problem lied a lack of a lack of clear understanding about what is the nature of the legal personality of these institutions. They’re not states, neither are they private individuals. It’s difficult to categorise them,” Orfeas adds.

“Ultimately however, even though states and international organisations are different, they’re branches of the same tree. I argued international law cares about the roots of that tree – in this case the roots being communal organisation through public institutions – rather than the form the branches might take – it being statehood, international organisation, or something entirely different.”

Orfeas is now pursuing a new idea, about bringing law into contact with cognitive science to throw light on the processes that lie behind legal reasoning itself.

“I wanted to explore more what goes on in our minds we reason about the law and that’s how I landed at cognitive science. I am aspiring to look at reasoning as a distinctly human experience in itself – better account for the subtle, more internal feelings of constraint and illumination that tend to accompany reasoning and see what this means for law as a field,” he says.

Orfeas says it is his position at Caius which affords him such an opportunity.

“A Research Fellowship offers unconditional, essential support for someone to choose their own adventure. That’s so vital right now in academia. It’s very important it exists,” he adds.