Konstantina Stavrou is a Researcher in the Research Group “General Human Rights Issues” since 2020. Her research focuses primarily on international criminal law, human rights law, and the law of evidence, with a particular emphasis on new technologies and their impact on these areas of law. Her broader research interests include trafficking in human beings, universal jurisdiction, the application of international criminal law by domestic courts, and UN Fact-Finding Missions. Konstantina is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law at the University of Vienna, completing a PhD thesis on the impact of introducing new technologies in international criminal proceedings on the right to a fair trial.

Konstantina is a recipient of a DOC fellowship for highly qualified doctoral candidates from the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In 2022, her PhD research received an award for outstanding PhD research by the Heinrich Graf Hardegg’sche Foundation. Her master thesis, examining the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, has been awarded the best master thesis award for 2017-2019 by the Hellenic Society for International Law and International Relations.

Publications

2026

• Freeman, Lindsay; Stavrou, Konstantina Desponia: Prosecuting Atrocity Crimes with Open Source Evidence: Insights from the International Criminal Court, in: Digital Witness: Using Open Source Information for Human Rights Investigation, Documentation, and Accountability, 2026 (forthcoming).
• Stavrou, Konstantina D.; McDermott, Yvonne: Digital Evidence, in: Routledge Handbook of International Criminal Law, 2026 (forthcoming).

2025

• Stavrou, Konstantina: Committing war crimes one click at a time? User-generated content and the war crime of outrages upon the personal dignity of the dead at the International Criminal Court, International Criminal Law Review, 2025, 681–707.

2024

• Fremuth, Michael Lysander; Sauermoser, Andreas; Stavrou, Konstantina: International Criminal Law before Domestic Courts. The Role of National Criminal Justice in the Prosecution of International Core Crimes, 2024. [Buch]
• Stavrou, Konstantina; Sax, Helmut: Open Source and User-generated Evidence in the Context of „Trafficking in Human Beings“, 2024.
• Stavrou, Konstantina: User-generated evidence in International Criminal Proceedings before Domestic Courts. Is seeing always believing?, in: International Criminal Law before Domestic Courts. Rechte!, 2024: 341–357.

2021

• Sauermoser, Andreas; Stavrou, Konstantina. 2021. The Prosecutor v Dominic Ongwen. A Judgement of Many Firsts.
• Stavrou, Konstantina: Civil Society and the IIMM in the investigation and prosecution of the crimes committed against the Rohingya, Utrecht Journal of International and European Law, 2021, 95–113.
• Stavrou, Konstantina. 2021. Open-Source Digital Evidence in International Criminal Cases: A Way Forward in Ensuring Accountability for Core Crimes?, Opinio Juris, January 26.

2020

• Fremuth, Michael Lysander; Sauermoser, Andreas; Stavrou, Konstantina. 2020. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon: After the Judgment in Ayyash et al., Justice at Last?, Opinio Juris, October 26.