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60 seconds with … Dr Gideon Boas

22 October 2008

Name: Dr Gideon Boas
Title: Senior lecturer
Org Unit: Faculty of Law

How long have you been with Monash University?

I have been with Monash full-time since July 2007.

Prior to working at Monash, where were you located and what was your role?

Before joining Monash law I was a senior legal officer at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Netherlands. I was there for nine years working in chambers (with the Judges) on a range of trials, appeals and development of the rules of procedure and evidence of the organisation (a blueprint for international criminal law and the International Criminal Court). For the last four and a half years at the ICTY I was the senior legal adviser to the Trial Chamber in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic the former President of (now) Serbia.

What challenges are ahead in your current role?

Helping to build the status of Monash law in the various fields of public international law, meeting an ambitious schedule of published work, and contributing to public debate about international law and politics.

What is it about your job that holds your interest or is particularly satisfying?

I love all of the core aspects of my work, particularly teaching those students who have a genuine enthusiasm for the law as a profession; researching and writing in my fields of interest, and participating in public discourse about criminal justice, international law and human rights. It is a privilege to be paid to engage in your areas of intellectual passion.

What is your favourite place in the world and why?

The MCG. I spent nine northern summers getting up at 6 am every weekend to listen to the football over the internet, but there is nothing like the vibrancy in the air and the smell of the grass on game day. It is a simple, if ridiculous, pleasure.

What is the best piece of advice you have received?

Treasure what is important. I spent the better part of nine years sitting in court listening to people who, in a sickening moment, had lost their families and their meaning to live to the rot of human hatred.

What is something about yourself that most of your colleagues wouldn't know?

What they don't know won't hurt them.

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