Michael Byers

Michael Byers is a Canadian legal scholar and non-fiction author. Academic background Byers was educated at the University of Saskatchewan, where he received his BA (honours) with majors in English literature and political studies. He then studied law at McGill University, achieving his LLB and BCL degrees in 1992. He completed his studies at University of Cambridge, where he received his PhD in international law. Before becoming a professor of political science at University of British Columbia in 2004, he was a research fellow from 1996 until 1999 at University of Oxford, and from 1999 until 2004, he was a professor of law and the director of Canadian Studies at Duke University. Since 2004, he has held the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia. From 2017 to 2019, he was concurrently appointed to the Brenda and David McLean Chair in Canadian Studies at UBC. Byers has also taught as a visiting professor at the universities of Tel Aviv, Cape Town, Nord (Norway) and Novosibirsk (Russia). During the 2021-2022 academic year, he was a Senior Global Fellow at the University of St Andrews. In 2023, Byers was a Fellow of the Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe “The International Rule of Law - Rise or Decline?” of the Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Universität Potsdam and Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin. Byers serves as chair of the Board of the Salt Spring Forum, a charitable organization that organizes an annual speakers’ series on Salt Spring Island, BC. Past guests include Noam Chomsky, Louise Arbour, Conrad Black, Andrew Coyne, Amy Goodman, Chantal Hebert, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben and David Suzuki.