Thesis Title

'Constituting the Worker in International Law' [provisional title]

Supervisors

Professor Susan Marks and Dr Stephen Humphreys

Research Interests

International human rights law, International labour law, History of international law, International legal theory, Critical theory

Viknes has a Master of Laws from the London School of Economics and a Bachelor of Laws from the National University of Singapore. She is a recipient of the prestigious Georg Schwarzenberger Prize in International Law. Viknes received the Lawyers' Alumni Prize from LSE for graduating at the top of her class, and obtained distinctions in all of her examinable modules. She has also worked as a research assistant for Prof. Susan Marks in the field of public international law, with a particular focus on international human rights law.

Prior to joining LSE, Viknes worked as a litigator in Singapore for several years, which involved working closely with Senior Counsel (the equivalent of Queens' Counsel in Singapore) and several partners in leading law firms. In addition, Viknes was engaged for a year as a legal consultant and in-field country researcher in post-conflict Nepal, where she worked on a range of international human rights and constitutional rights issues.

The object of Viknes' PhD research is to bring into focus the manner in which the figure of the worker is constituted by international law. This is grounded in an examination of the conditions within which the worker historically arose as a subject of regulation in the international arena. She seeks to engage in critical re-description of the function that the discourse of law performs in facilitating and sustaining particular conceptions and subjectivities of the worker.