School of Law

Staff

Biography
Aoife Nolan graduated with an LL.B from Trinity College Dublin in 2000.  Having been awarded a scholarship by the Irish Department of Education and Science, she completed her PhD on the judicial treatment and enforcement of children's socio-economic rights at the European University Institute, Florence, in 2005. She has previously worked as a Senior Legal Officer with the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Litigation Programme at the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions and as a part-time lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin. She is Coordinating Editor of the Housing & ESC Rights Law Quarterly. In addition to other activities, she is a Research Associate with a Think Tank for Action on Social Change, Ireland and was involved in their Democracy Audit Ireland Project. She has also served as a Council of Europe Expert on economic and social rights. During the course of her studies, she has been a Visiting Research Fellow at Columbia University School of Law, New York, Thomas Addis Emmet Fellow in Public Interest Law at the University of Washington, Seattle, and has spent time as a Visiting Student at the University of Cape Town. Her primary areas of research are economic and social rights, children's rights, international human rights law, public interest law and comparative constitutional law. She has written and been published on these topics. Together with QUB colleagues Prof. Colin Harvey and Dr. Rory O’Connell, she has recently begun work on a major research project on ‘Budget Analysis and the Advancement of Social and Economic Rights in Northern Ireland’, which is being funded by Atlantic Philanthropies. She served as Human Rights Adviser to the Working Group on Economic and Social Rights, including Relevant Equality Issues of the Northern Ireland Bill of Rights Forum. In early 2008, she provided legal advice to the International NGO Coalition for an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.  She is currently working on a monograph on children's socio-economic rights, democracy and the courts, which will be published by Hart Publishing in late 2008. 

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Human Rights
• Constitutional Law in Context

Postgraduate

• Children's Rights
• Women's Rights
• Human Rights
• Equality and the Law

Research

Economic and social rights, children's rights, public interest law, comparative constitutional law, women's inheritance rights, the role of non-state actors in human rights law.

Selected Publications

'Ireland: The Separation of Powers Doctrine vs. Socio-Economic Rights' in M. Langford (ed.)
Social Rights Jurisprudence:Emerging Trends in Comparative and International Law
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008) 295-319

‘The Battle(s) over Children's Rights in the Irish Constitution’ (2007) 22(4) Irish Political Studies 495-516

'A Role for the Courts in Ensuring the Enforcement of the Socio-Economic Rights of the Child: Overcoming the "Counter-majoritarian Objection''' in A.Alen et al(eds)The UN Children's Rights Convention: Theory meets Practice (The Netherlands: Intersentia, 2007)

Litigating Economic, Social and Cultual Rights: Legal Practitioners' Dossier (Geneva: COHRE, 2007) (with M. Langford)

'Security of Tenure from a Child Rights Perspective' (2006) 7(3) ESR Review 22

“Litigating Housing Rights: Experiences and Issues” in (2006) 28 Dublin University Law Journal 145-171

Administration

• Assistant Director of the Human Rights Centre 2006 - present