What makes you interesting? 

I’m a very enthusiastic baker and I love hiking, bouldering, Harry Potter, gymming, and running. I’m strangely good at making elaborate birthday cards.

• Bio 

  Maxine Rubin is a PhD candidate at the University of Cape Town’s Department of Political Studies. Her research examines the relationship between African states and the International Criminal Court. She was awarded the Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Fellowship for Dissertation Proposal Development (2017), the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Merit Scholarship (2019-2020), and Vice Chancellor’s Research Scholarship (2019-2020) for her doctoral studies. She completed her MA in Post-War Recovery Studies at the University of York (2013-2014), for which she was awarded the Commonwealth Scholarship. Maxine has worked as a human rights researcher, with a focus in transitional justice, post-conflict justice, gender justice, and international relations. Maxine is the assistant editor for the South African Journal of International Affairs.

• Title and Summary of PhD project

  Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: African States’ Behaviours in Relation to the International Criminal Court.

  African states have been divided in their relations with the International Criminal Court (ICC). Despite these divisions, the literature on this relationship has focused primarily upon the seven states that have advocated for withdrawal from the ICC, thereby neglecting the responses of the remaining 27 states. This dissertation addresses this omission by studying all types of behaviours by the African ICC members. To this end, Albert Hirschman’s “exit, voice, and loyalty” model is adapted into an international relations (IR) model to categorise the different behaviours. Official records from the ICC, African Union, and applicable United Nations meetings are drawn upon as evidence of a type of formal behaviour. The text-based sources are complemented by academic literature to provide tentative explanations of patterns that emerge. This dissertation advances IR behavioural theory by developing explanations of exit, voice, and loyalty and identifies the key factors shaping African states’ behaviours in relation to the ICC.

• Publications 

  1. Maxine Rubin and Masana Ndinga-Kanga, “Where Local and Global Orders Interface: An Analysis of How Civil Society Actors Contextualise Human Rights Norms in South Africa,” in Diplomacy and Borderlands: African Agency at the Intersections of Orders, Katharina Coleman, Markus Kornprobst and Annette Seegers (eds.), United Kingdom: Routledge, 2020.
  2. Annah Moyo, Maxine Rubin, and Hugo van der Merwe, “Reparations for Apartheid-Era Victims in South Africa: The Unfinished Business of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” in Reparations for Victims of Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity: Systems in Place and Systems in the Making (2nd ed.), Carla Ferstman and Mariana Goetz (eds), Martinus Nijhoff (BRILL), 2020: pp.656-677.
  3. Aurélien Pradier, Maxine Rubin & Hugo van der Merwe (2018) Between transitional justice and politics: Reparations in South Africa, South African Journal of International Affairs, 25:3, 301-321.
  4. Maxine Rubin, “(Review Essay) Politicized Justice: Africa and the International Criminal Court,” International Journal of Transitional Justice, 2020, 14, 401–411.
  5. Maxine Rubin, “Exploring Transitional Justice’s Impact Pathways on Gender Justice: Trends in Sexual and Gender-Based Violence against Women from Thirteen African Cases,” Journal of Human Rights Practice, 2020.

• What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given? 

   

  That there are lessons to be learnt during times of hardship.