Sarah’s research interests lie at the intersections of law & politics, war & peace and justice & the rule of law. She has published articles on the politics of international criminal justice, peacebuilding, mixed courts, complementarity, the Responsibility to Protect, immunities, and justice in Sudan and Uganda. Her book, Complementarity in the Line of Fire: The Catalysing Effect of the International Criminal Court in Uganda and Sudan (Cambridge University Press, 2013) explores whether, how and why the complementarity principle in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court has had a catalysing effect on the legal systems of Uganda and Sudan. She spent many months in both countries, interviewing officials, observing proceedings and searching documents to discover whether domestic legal reforms have taken place in response to the Court’s involvement. She also served as a Visiting Professional for an ICC judge.

Sarah lectures and supervises undergraduates in International Law and International Criminal Law. She also covers part of the lectures of the LLM course in International Human Rights Law. For the Department of Politics and International Studies she teaches the course on Transitional Justice. Sarah has given guest lectures on international criminal law, transitional justice and the responsibility to protect for the British military and universities in England, The Netherlands, Uganda and Darfur.

Sarah has served as a consultant for various NGOs, Ministries of Foreign Affairs and the Department for International Development (DfID) on rule-of-law building and transitional justice. In 2010-2011 she was seconded to the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel for Sudan (see Sarah's report in the FTD20 Newsletter). Before starting her PhD, Sarah worked for the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs in New York, The Hague and Sudan and for an NGO in Senegal.

Sarah holds an LLM (cum laude, Utrecht, with a specialisation in Cape Town), an MPhil in International Relations (Cantab) and a PhD in International Law (Cantab).