Godwin Dzah

Godwin Dzah is an Assistant Professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia. His teaching and research interests include public, international, comparative and environmental law. His works have been published in edited volumes and in leading peer-reviewed law journals including the Ocean Yearbook, the African Journal of International and Comparative Law, the African Human Rights Law Journal and the Canadian Yearbook of International Law.

Prior to joining Allard Law, Professor Dzah was an assistant professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Alberta and a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. Dzah also completed a United Nations-Nippon Foundation Fellowship at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University and the Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea of the Office of Legal Affairs at the United Nations Secretariat in New York. He previously taught and practised law in Ghana, and consults locally and internationally for government agencies, international organizations, and research institutions on law, environment, and development. 

He holds a BA (Political Science) and an LLB (post-first degree in law) from the University of Ghana, a Qualifying Certificate in Law from the Ghana School of Law, a Master of Laws degree from the Harvard Law School, and a doctorate in law from the University of British Columbia. He has received several awards including the John Peters Humphrey Fellowship (the Canadian Council on International Law), the Charles Bourne Graduate Scholarship in International Law, and the Dean of Law Doctoral Thesis Prize (the University of British Columbia). He is the author of Sustainable Development, International Law, and a Turn to African Legal Cosmologies (Cambridge University Press, 2024), which was awarded the 2025 Certificate of Merit for a Preeminent Contribution to Creative Scholarship by the American Society of International Law.

Research and Publications

To learn more about my research, please visit my PURE Research profile. You can also access my works on the following sites: 

• Allard Research Commons / bepress Legal Repository Search
• SSRN (Social Science Research Network)
• HeinOnline 

Godwin E. K. Dzah, Sustainable Development, International Law, and a Turn to African Legal Cosmologies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024).

Godwin E. K. Dzah, “The Interaction Between International and Domestic Law, Aqua Nullius, and Water-Mediated Claims in Canada” (2024) 61 Canadian Yearbook of international Law 206–236.

Godwin E. K. Dzah, “The Law of the Sea’s Fluid Anthropocentrism” in Vincent Chapaux, Frédéric Mégret and Usha Natarajan (eds) The Routledge Handbook of International Law and Anthropocentrism (London: Routledge 2023) 102–121.

Godwin E. K. Dzah, “Theorising the Right to Environment: An Africological Typology” (2019) 27:1 African Journal of International and Comparative Law 25–49.