Philippe Joseph Sands, KC (born 17 October 1960) is a British and French writer and lawyer at 11 King's Bench Walk and Professor of Laws and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals at University College London. A specialist in international law, he appears as counsel and advocate before many international courts and tribunals, including the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the European Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court. Sands serves on the panel of arbitrators at the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). He is the author of seventeen books on international law, including Lawless World (2005) and Torture Team (2008). His book East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity (2016) has been awarded numerous prizes, including the 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, and has been translated into 24 languages. His latest books are The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive (2020) about Otto Wächter and The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain's Colonial Legacy (2022) about Chagos. Since 5 February 2018 Sands has served as President of English PEN. Early life Sands was born in London on 17 October 1960 to Jewish parents. He was educated at University College School in Hampstead, London, and read Law at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, attaining a BA in 1982 and going on to achieve first-class honours in the LLM course a year later. After completing his postgraduate studies at Cambridge, Sands spent a year as a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School. Academic career From 1984 to 1988 Sands was a Research Fellow at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and the Cambridge University Research Centre for International Law (now the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law). He has also held academic positions at King's College London (1988–1993) and SOAS (1993–2001). He was a Global Professor of Law at New York University Law School (1993–2003) and has held visiting positions at Paris I (Sorbonne), University of Melbourne, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Indiana University Bloomington, University of Toronto, Boston College Law School and Lviv University. In 2019 he was appointed the Samuel and Judith Pisar Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Sands was the co-founder