Amal Clooney is to teach at Columbia University this spring, the New York City school announced on Friday.

The international human rights lawyer and former adviser to the former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan will serve as a visiting lecturer and a senior fellow with the law school’s Human Rights Institute.

“It is an honor to be invited as a visiting professor at Columbia Law School alongside such a distinguished faculty and talented student pool,” Clooney said in a statement. “I look forward to getting to know the next generation of human rights advocates studying here.”

Clooney is based in London, where she lives with her husband, the actor George Clooney. He will be filming a movie, Money Monster, in New York in the spring.

Last month, Amal Clooney joined a legal team working to censure the UK over the treatment of 11 prisoners, known as the “hooded men”, who say they were tortured by the British army in Northern Ireland.

She has also represented the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister of Ukraine.

The co-director of Columbia’s Human Rights Institute, Professor Sarah Cleveland, said Clooney’s “extensive experience” would enrich Columbia’s students.