Ian Matthew Kysel is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law. He founded and directs the Transnational Disputes Clinic and is a core faculty member in the Migration and Human Rights Program. Kysel currently also holds an appointment as a Non-Resident Fellow at The Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at The New School. He is also a founder and director of the Migrant Rights Initiative and a founder of the Global Strategic Litigation Council for Refugee Rights, the Secretariat of which is jointly housed at Cornell and The New School. From 2019-2021 Kysel co-directed Cornell’s Asylum and Convention Against Torture Appellate Clinic.

Kysel’s research interests primarily lie in public and private international law, including international migration and human rights law and US immigration law. Kysel has argued or participated in litigation before immigration, federal and state courts in the United States as well as international tribunals. He has provided testimony to various legislative bodies and commissions. Before joining the faculty at the law school, Kysel was a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California. He also served as the Aryeh Neier Fellow at both the National ACLU and Human Rights Watch and practiced in Shearman & Sterling’s International Arbitration Group and its Public International Law Practice.

Kysel holds an LLM in Advocacy, with distinction, a JD, Magna Cum Laude, Order of the Coif, and a Certificate in Refugees and Humanitarian Emergencies from Georgetown University Law Center. While a law student at Georgetown, he was an articles editor for the Georgetown Journal of International Law and a Global Law Scholar. He holds a BA, with high honors, Phi Beta Kappa, from Swarthmore College.