(Law, m.1979)

Philippe Sands was born in London in 1960 and studied Law at Corpus Christi College. He was called to the Bar in 1985 and appointed Queen's Counsel in 2003. He is currently  Professor of Laws and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals at University College London and a practising barrister at 11 Kings Bench Walk. 

He lectures around the world and has held numerous academic positions. From 1984 to 1988, Sands was a Research Fellow at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and the Cambridge University Research Centre for International Law (now the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law). He has also held academic positions at King's College London (1988–93) and SOAS (1993–2001). He was a Global Professor of Law at New York University Law School (1993–2003) and has held visiting positions at Paris I (Sorbonne), University of Melbourne, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Indiana University Bloomington, University of Toronto, Boston College Law School. Harvard Law School and Lviv University.

Philippe was the co-founder of the Centre for International Environmental Law and the Project on International Courts and Tribunals. In 2021, he co-chaired an international working group that proposed language for a new crime of 'ecocide' to be added to the Statute of the International Criminal Court, on the destruction of ecosystems. In spring 2024, he gave The Reynolds Lecture in Cambridge  'From genocide to ecocide: international justice and its discontents'; that talk can be viewed on YouTube.

Philippe has published 17 books. His book East West Street was the winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non Fiction 2016, the British Book Awards Non-fiction Book of the Year 2017 and 2018 Prix Montaigne. He is also the author of The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive, Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules and The Last Colony: a Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain's Colonial Legacy, amongst others. His upcoming book, 38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia, will be published in April 2025.

Phillipe writes regularly for the press and serves as a commentator for the BBC, CNN and other radio and television producers. His BBC Storyville film My Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did premiered in April 2015 at the Tribecca Film Festival. In 2018, he wrote and presented the BBC Radio 4 documentary Intrigue: The Ratline. He was President of English PEN from 2018 to 2023 and is and a member of the board of the Hay Festival.