Sumudu Atapattu

Sumudu Atapattu is the Director of Research Centers and Senior Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin Law School. She teaches in the areas of international environmental law, climate change and human rights. She holds an LL.M. in Public International Law and a Ph.D. in International Environmental Law from the University of Cambridge, U.K., and is an Attorney-at-Law of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka.  Atapattu's books include Human Rights Approaches to Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities (2015, Routledge, U.K); International Environmental Law and the Global South (2015, Cambridge University Press) (co-editor); and Emerging Principles of International Environmental Law (2006, Transnational Publishers, New York). She is affiliated with University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, the Center for South Asia, and the 4W Initiative and was a visiting professor at Doshisha University Law School, Japan, in summer 2014 and Giessen University, Germany in summer 2016. Atapattu also coordinates the Human Rights Program at UW-Madison. In Sri Lanka, she worked as a Senior Research Consultant to the Law & Trust Society, a human rights organization, and as the editor of Sri Lanka: State of Human Rights 2002, an annual publication on the human rights situation in Sri Lanka. She serves as the Lead Counsel for Human Rights at the Center for International Sustainable Development Law based in Montreal, Canada, and is on the advisory board of the McGill International Journal of Sustainable Development Law and Policy.