Rebecca Hamilton is an Associate Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law (AUWCL), where her research and teaching focus on national security law, international law, and criminal law. Her scholarship draws on her experience in the prosecution of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, as well as her work in conflict zones as a foreign correspondent. She is the author of Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide (Palgrave Macmillan) which analyzes citizen activism and the effort to stop mass atrocities.

Before joining the faculty at AUWCL, Hamilton was an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School. She previously served as a lawyer in the prosecutorial division of the International Criminal Court, working on cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Uganda and Sudan. Hamilton has also worked in the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and has been the Deputy Director of the Bernstein Institute for Human Rights at NYU School of Law.

Prior to entering academia Hamilton worked as a journalist for the Washington Post, and Reuters. A Pulitzer Center grantee, and former fellow at New America and at Open Society Foundations, she has also written for Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, International Herald Tribune, and The New Republic. She has appeared on PBS Newshour, NPR, BBC, Al-Jazeera, and other media outlets.

Born in New Zealand, Hamilton completed undergraduate studies in Sydney, Australia. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School, where she was a Knox Fellow. She is a member of the New York Bar and serves on the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law.