Francisco Lobo is a Military Ethics advisor and International Law expert. He holds a PhD in War Studies (King's College London), where he is also a Tutor at the KCL Centre for Military Ethics. He holds an LLM in International Legal Studies (New York University), an LLM in International Law and an LLB (University of Chile). He has worked as a legal practitioner in the private and public sectors, including at the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the UN International Law Commission. He is also a lecturer and academic, as well as a consultant on asylum cases in the UK and the US. He has trained military personnel in human rights and ethics standards at the Chilean War Academy in Santiago; at the Theresian Military Academy in Vienna; at the Baltic Defence College in Tartu; and at the Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania. He has also contributed to online training delivered by King’s College London to the Colombian armed forces. He has worked as an advisor for an international development project to train the Armed Forces of Ukraine in IHL and military ethics standards. 

Research Interests

• International Law
• Military Ethics
• Human Rights
• Laws of War
• Legal Theory
• Moral Philosophy
• History and Post-Colonial Studies
• Diplomacy and Strategic Communications

Books

• Echoes of Chivalry. Military Honour and Human Dignity in the Age of Professional Armies (Brill, 2026), https://brill.com/display/title/73972.
• The Praeter-Colonial Mind. An Intellectual Journey Through the Back Alleys of Empire (E-International Relations, Bristol, 2025: https://www.e-ir.info/publication/the-praeter-colonial-mind-an-intellectual-journey-through-the-back-alleys-of-empire/).
• El Uso de Drones en el Derecho Penal Internacional de los Conflictos Armados (The Use of Drones under the International Criminal Law of Armed Conflict). Santiago, Librotecnia, 2019.
• En conquista de los derechos humanos. Homenaje a José Zalaquett Daher (Conquering human rights. Tribute to Jose Zalaquett Daher) (Coordinator). University of Chile School of Law. Santiago, Thomson Reuters, 2017.
• Teoría y Práctica de la Intervención Humanitaria en la Tradición de la Guerra Justa (Theory and Practice of Humanitarian Intervention in the Just War Tradition). Mexico D.F., Tirant lo Blanch, 2016.

Book chapters

• Global Governance and the Use of Force (with Grant B. Falken), in Houghton, Ruth, O'Donoghue, Aoife, and Cher Weixia Chen (Eds.), Research Handbook on Global Governance. Edward Elgar, 2025, pp. 478-492.
• Alonso de la Vera Cruz (1507-1584), in Brunstetter, Daniel, and O’Driscoll, Cian (Eds.), Just War Thinkers Revisited. New York, Routledge, 2025, pp. 49-63.
• Vitoria the Universal Thinker: Some Ethical Dilemmas Concerning Space Exploration (with David Whetham). In: Coleman, Nikki (ed.). Military Space Ethics. Hampshire, Howgate, 2022, pp. 318-330.
• The International Law on the Use of Force in the Americas: Understanding the dynamics of subjects and obligations (with Felipe R. Silvestre). In: Duarte, Maria Luisa; Lanceiro, Rui Tavares; and Duarte, Francisco de Abreu (Coord.). Ordem Jurídica Global do Século XXI. Lisbon, AAFDL Editora, 2020, pp. 199-233.

Research articles

• Robocop Reimagined: Harnessing the Power of AI for LOAC Compliance, Journal of Military Ethics (online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15027570.2025.2569130), 14 October 2025.
• The quest for the Ukrainian “Araucana”. The case for the humanization of the Orc, Revista Electrónica Iberoamericana, 18:2 (2024), pp. 241-263.
• RtoP, the Imperial Critique, and Self-Determination: Recovering the Narrative of the Tlaxcaltecas (with Daniel Brunstetter), Global Responsibility to Protect, 16:3 (2024), pp. 213-238.
• ‘Here Be Dragons’: Mapping the Legal Contours of Jus Cogens in International Law, in Groningen Journal of International Law, 10:2 (2024), pp. 72-90.
• The ‘capture or kill’ debate revisited: Putting the ‘human’ back in ‘human enhancement of soldiers’, in The Military Law and the Law of War Review, Vol. 58 No. 1, 2020, pp. 85-120.
• Kant’s Conception of Human Dignity and the Importance of Singularity within Commonality, in International Journal of Law and Political Sciences, Vol. 13, No. 2, 2019, pp. 214-219.
• A conception of human dignity: The normative case against female genital mutilation, in The Journal of Human Dignity and Wellbeing, No. 7, 2019, pp. 80-98.
• Abolishing Atomic Warfare? Nuclear Power and Natural-International Law in the Twenty-first Century, in Transnational Legal Theory (online: https://doi.org/10.1080/20414005.2019.1630172), 2019.

Policy papers

• Ukraine’s Wartime Diplomacy in Latin America and the Caribbean (with Carlos Solar), RUSI Research Papers, 2025 (online: https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/research-papers/ukraines-wartime-diplomacy-latin-america-and-caribbean).

Media articles

• The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine: Crisis or Opportunity?, RUSI (online: https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/trump-corollary-monroe-doctrine-crisis-or-opportunity).
• The Rio Treaty's Security Pact and Unintended Consequences of Threatening Canada, Greenland, and Panama (online: https://www.justsecurity.org/106160/rio-treaty-trump-canada-greenland-panama/).

Teaching

• Tutor at the KCL Centre for Military Ethics.
•  Guest Lecturer at the Baltic Defence College, Tartu (September 2025; January 2026).
• Guest Lecturer at the Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania, Vilnius (November 2025).
• Guest Lecturer at the Theresian Military Academy, Wiener Neustadt (June 2024).