Sarah Knuckey is director of the Human Rights Clinic and faculty co-director of the Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law School, where she is the Lieff Cabraser Clinical Professor of Law. The Clinic teaches students skills and perspectives for careers in social justice and human rights advocacy.

As an expert in human rights and humanitarian law, Knuckey served from 2007 to 2016 as an adviser to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions. She has investigated and reported on unlawful killings, armed conflict, sexual violence, the impact of extractive industries, and protest rights in Afghanistan, Brazil, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Pakistan. 

With a specialty in new weapons technologies, she is the author of Drones and Targeted Killings: Ethics, Law, and Politics.

Knuckey has extensively studied the mental health risks in the human rights field, including trauma exposure and post-traumatic stress, and responses by rights organizations to the needs of their workers.