December 30, 2020 | Jeanne Leblanc - School of Law

Richard Ashby Wilson Named Faculty Dean at UConn Law

Human rights scholar Richard Ashby Wilson has been named associate dean for faculty development and intellectual life at the UConn School of Law. “Professor Wilson is an excellent interdisciplinary scholar and teacher and an outstanding institutional service member,” Dean Eboni S. Nelson said, announcing the appointment. “I look forward to working with him as we […]

Richard Ashby Wilson

Richard Ashby Wilson, the Gladstein Distinguished Chair of Human Rights and a professor of law and anthropology at UConn School of Law, talking with students at the law school’s campus in Hartford in April 2019. Wilson has been appointed named associate dean for faculty development and intellectual life at the law school. (Peter Morenus/UConn Photo)

Human rights scholar Richard Ashby Wilson has been named associate dean for faculty development and intellectual life at the UConn School of Law.

“Professor Wilson is an excellent interdisciplinary scholar and teacher and an outstanding institutional service member,” Dean Eboni S. Nelson said, announcing the appointment. “I look forward to working with him as we continue to build upon the law school’s great legacy of innovative research and impactful scholarship.”

As associate dean, Wilson’s charge will be to direct faculty development, advance faculty scholarship, and cultivate an intellectually vibrant scholarly community that promotes and supports diversity, equity, and belonging. He will assume the post on January 1, 2021.

Wilson is the Gladstein Distinguished Chair of Human Rights and a professor of law and anthropology at the UConn School of Law, as well as Founding Director of the university’s Human Rights Institute. His scholarship centers on human rights, humanitarianism, truth and reconciliation commissions, and international criminal tribunals.

He has edited seven books on international human rights and written four, including “Incitement on Trial: Prosecuting International Speech Crimes,” published by the Cambridge University Press in 2017. From 2009 to 2013, he also served as chair of the Connecticut State Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Wilson holds a BSc. in Economics and a PhD. in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He succeeds Leslie Levin, the Hugh Macgill Professor of Law, who was appointed associate dean in 2019.

“At UConn Law, we have an abundance of scholarly riches,” Wilson said. “I look forward to supporting and enhancing faculty research on the law and the societies, cultures, and polities in which law is embedded.”