Zeray Yihdego

Professor Zeray Yihdego is a Personal Chair at the University of Aberdeen's School of Law, where he has been teaching since January 2013. He serves as Co-director of the Aberdeen Centre for Constitutional and Public International Law and holds significant external positions including membership in the UN Expert Group on the Firearms Protocol and consultancy with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

His academic background includes an LLB (Distinction) from Ethiopia, an LLM from Cambridge University, and a PhD from Durham University. He has held previous academic positions as a Senior Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, a Tutor at Durham University, and a Part-time Lecturer in Ethiopia. He also served as a Visiting Research Fellow with the Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict at the University of Oxford and as a Senior Visiting Member at Linacre College, University of Oxford during 2015/16.

Professor Yihdego's research focuses on public international law with emphasis on arms control/trade, international humanitarian law, peace and security, democratic governance, development and human rights, and the law of international watercourses issues relating to Africa. He is particularly known for his expertise on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and Nile Basin water issues, as well as arms trade treaty implementation.

His recent scholarly output shows a strong trend toward interdisciplinary research, particularly integrating the Water-Energy-Food Nexus framework with international water law. His work increasingly focuses on African perspectives in international law, with numerous publications examining the Nile Basin, Horn of Africa regional organizations, and Ethiopia-Eritrea relations through legal frameworks.

Professor Yihdego serves as the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Ethiopian Yearbook of International Law (EtYIL, Springer) and reviews for major academic publishers including Hart, Routledge, Brill and Oxford University Press. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

He participates as a Principal Investigator in a 5.5 million Euro EU funded multidisciplinary research project concerning the governance of the Zambezi and Omo river basins, collaborating with experts across law, economics, hydrology, environmental science, and political science from Africa, Europe, and the US. Additionally, he serves as an External Examiner for Brunel University and Dundee University Law Schools.