Professor Matiangai Sirleaf is an interdisciplinary international scholar, justice seeker, and human rights advocate who has worked to unearth unjust hierarchies embedded in international law and to remedy the inequities that emerge and persist. Sirleaf is the Nathan Patz Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. She holds a secondary appointment as a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Professor Sirleaf’s research can be broadly categorized as critical international legal scholarship. Sirleaf writes and teaches in the areas of global public health law, public international law, international human rights law, international criminal law, post-conflict and transitional justice, and criminal law. Professor Sirleaf’s current research projects are focused on race and the histories of international human rights and health inequality and the law. Professor Sirleaf is working on her forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press, There Are Black People in the Past: Reclaiming Our Time in Human Rights.
Sirleaf is the editor of the first thematic print volume on Race & National Security (2023) with Oxford University Press. The American Society of International Law awarded it the Certificate for High Technical Craftsmanship and Utility to Practicing Lawyers and Scholars in 2025. It has also been favorably reviewed in the American Journal of International Law, Harvard Law School National Security Journal and Jotwell.
Professor Sirleaf has published extensively. Her work has been featured in leading law reviews such as the Cardozo Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the Texas Law Review, and the UCLA Law Review. Professor Sirleaf’s writing appears in several textbooks with Oxford University Press like Foundations of Global Health & Human Rights (2020) and Global Health Law & Policy: Ensuring Justice for a Healthier World (2023).
Her commentary and reflections also appear in several fora such as, AfronomicsLaw, American Journal of International Law, American Journal of International Law Unbound, American Society of International Law Insights, Bill of Health, Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, Jurist, Just Security, Opinio Juris, and Third World Approaches to International Law Review.
The interdisciplinary nature of Professor Sirleaf’s work has led to invited keynotes, plenary panelists presentations and lecture invitations from a wide range of institutions nationally and globally. Sirleaf has been invited to consult and provide expert advice for institutions like the World Health Organization, the United States’ Department of State, the National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine, and the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The strength, breadth and depth of Sirleaf’s scholarship has also resulted in several leadership positions, including as executive editor at Just Security and as a member of the board of editors of the American Journal of International Law.
Professor Sirleaf has received a number of prestigious grants, awards, fellowships, and other honors for her work throughout her career. These include recognition by the University of Maryland, Baltimore, with the President’s Global Impact Fund Award (2025), the Interprofessional Education Center Seed Grant award (2025), as well as recognition by Public Justice as the 2024 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award for Sirleaf and a team of attorneys for their work on a human rights litigation case. Additionally, Professor Sirleaf has been recognized as a fellow of the American Bar Foundation (2023), received the University of Pittsburgh Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award (2019), the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics Health Law Scholar Selection (2019), the University Center for International Studies Faculty Fellowship (2018-2019), the Ford Institute for Human Security Research Grant (2016-2018), the New York University Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award (2014), and a Fulbright Fellowship (2004).
Professor Sirleaf received her J.D. from Yale Law School, her M.A. from the University of Ghana Legon Center for International Affairs and her B.A., from New York University College of Arts and Sciences.
Discover more about Matiangai Sirleaf’s work at www.matiangai.com.