Thompson Chengeta
European Council Research Fellow, University of Southampton (website)
twitter: @DrThompsonLaw
email: T [dot] Chengeta [at] soton [dot] ac [dot] uk & tchengeta [at] @llm16 [dot] law [dot] harvard [dot] edu
phone: (023) 8059 9515
European Council Research Fellow, University of Southampton (website)
twitter: @DrThompsonLaw
email: T [dot] Chengeta [at] soton [dot] ac [dot] uk & tchengeta [at] @llm16 [dot] law [dot] harvard [dot] edu
phone: (023) 8059 9515
killer robots | drones
Thompson Chengeta is a European Council Research Fellow on Drone Violence and Artificial Intelligence Ethics at the University of Southampton (UK), where he leads research on autonomous weapon systems. He serves as a legal expert member of the International Panel on the Regulation of Autonomous Weapons – an independent and interdisciplinary panel of international experts working in the framework of the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. Chengeta also serves as an international law expert for the International Committee for Robots Arms Control and provides legal expertise to the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots and a number of African States on disarmament issues.
Chengeta is an Associate Researcher at the South African Research Chair in International Law (SARCIL), University of Johannesburg, where he is also a founding editor of SARCIL Blog on international law. He is a non-resident fellow at the Institute of International and Comparative Law in Africa, University of Pretoria and also teaches in the LLM/MPhil (Human Rights & Democratisation in Africa) presented by the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria. He is an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at Midlands State University where he teaches in the LLM Constitutional and Human Rights Law Program. In 2018, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford.
Chengeta studied law at Harvard Law School (LLM), University of Pretoria (LLD & LLM) and Midlands State University (LLB).
Recent Publications:
Thompson Chengeta is a European Council Research Fellow on Drone Violence and Artificial Intelligence Ethics at the University of Southampton (UK), where he leads research on autonomous weapon systems. He serves as a legal expert member of the International Panel on the Regulation of Autonomous Weapons – an independent and interdisciplinary panel of international experts working in the framework of the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. Chengeta also serves as an international law expert for the International Committee for Robots Arms Control and provides legal expertise to the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots and a number of African States on disarmament issues.
Chengeta is an Associate Researcher at the South African Research Chair in International Law (SARCIL), University of Johannesburg, where he is also a founding editor of SARCIL Blog on international law. He is a non-resident fellow at the Institute of International and Comparative Law in Africa, University of Pretoria and also teaches in the LLM/MPhil (Human Rights & Democratisation in Africa) presented by the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria. He is an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at Midlands State University where he teaches in the LLM Constitutional and Human Rights Law Program. In 2018, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford.
Chengeta studied law at Harvard Law School (LLM), University of Pretoria (LLD & LLM) and Midlands State University (LLB).
Recent Publications:
- "Autonomous Weapon Systems: Accountability Gaps and Racial Oppression," in Reclaiming Human Rights in a Changing World Order, Brookings Institution Press, October 10, 2022.
- "Is the Convention on Conventional Weapons the appropriate framework to produce a new law on autonomous weapon systems?," in A life interrupted: essays in honour of the lives and legacies of Christof Heyns, Pretoria University Law Press, January 10, 2022.
- "Ethics and Autonomous Weapon Systems," in Proceedings of the Bruges Colloquium, New Technologies on the Battlefield: Friend or Foe? 12-16 October 2020, ICRC, published September 2021.
- Autonomous Armed Drones and the Challenges to Multilateral Consensus on Value-Based Regulation, in C. Enemark (ed.), Ethics of Drone Strikes: Restraining Remote-Control Killing, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020.
- A critique of the Canberra guiding principles on lethal autonomous weapon systems. E-International Relations. April 15, 2020.
- International law governance of autonomous weapon systems and the turn to ethics. University of Illinois Journal of Law, Technology & Policy, April 16, 2020.