Robin Geiß

Robin Geiss (born 1974) is a German United Nations diplomat and international legal scholar. In 2021, he was appointed by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres as Director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. Prior to this, Geiss held the Swiss Chair of International Humanitarian Law at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and served as Director of the Glasgow Centre for International Law and Security at the University of Glasgow.

Early life and education Geiss studied law at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Kiel (Ph.D. 2003) and at the New York University (LL.M. 2004). He has been a scholar of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung) and the recipient of a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship.

As Swiss Chair of International Humanitarian Law (2020–2021), Geiss initiated the “disruptive military technologies” workstream at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, and from 2017 to 2021 he was a visiting professor at the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po in Paris. He also served as a member of the scientific advisory boards of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), the Leibniz Science Campus on Europe and America in the Modern World, the German Foundation for Peace Research and the German Red Cross’ National Committee on International Humanitarian Law. He is an ex officio member of the United Nations Secretary General's advisory board on Disarmament Matters.

From 2004 to 2005 and again from 2007 to 2010, Geiss worked as Legal Adviser for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Legal Division and as ICRC delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council. From 2014 to 2021 he served as co-editor of the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law.