Aoife Nolan

Aoife Nolan is an Irish academic who is Professor of International Human Rights Law and Director of the University of Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre. She is President of the Council of Europe's European Committee of Social Rights, and an international advisor on the rights of the child and economic and social rights and strategic legal implications. She has led international research projects and acted as a consultant to United Nations or other global institutions on human rights and strategic law.

Education
Nolan studied law at Dublin University, graduating LLB and undertook her doctorate at the EUI. She worked at Durham University, and Queen's University, Belfast including a project analysing human rights budgets. She is currently Professor of International Human Rights Law and Director of the University of Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre. She is President of the Council of Europe's European Committee of Social Rights.

Career
In 2007-8, Nolan was senior legal officer with the ESC Rights Litigation Programme of the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, and human rights adviser to the Working Group on Economic and Social Rights, where she engaged with the Northern Ireland Bill of Rights Forum. In 2008, she advised the International NGO Coalition for an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR). Nolan served on the Coordinating Committee of the ESCR-Net Case-Law Database and is a Council member of Child Rights International Network (CRIN) and as a founding trustee of Just Fair.

Nolan was academic lead of the interdisciplinary Children and Childhood Network and hosted the Nottingham Summer School on Child Rights. She is the Director of the Human Rights Law Centre's Economic and Social Rights Unit. During 2015-2018, her work on rights and justice research priorities involved over 700 members from 22 different university centres. In July 2021, she was elected to the University of Nottingham Senate.

Nolan worked at international centres such as Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, the University of Groningen, Harvard, Oslo, Global Campus for Human Rights (Venice) and held professorial positions at Fordham, Columbia, Washington, Stellenbosch, Cape Town, Queen's University Belfast, and at the Faculty of Law and Criminology at the Université Catholique de Louvain.

She is a visiting professorial Fellow at UNSW Law and a Hauser senior global research Fellow at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law. And since 2022, at University of Ulster and Roma Tre University.

Nolan helped to establish Economic and Social Rights Academic Network UKI (ESRAN-UKI) and was a member of the Coordinating Committee of the Academic Network on the European Social Charter (ANESC-RACSE).

Nolan is an academic expert at Doughty Street Chambers where she co-leads the Children's rights group. She is currently President of the Council of Europe's European Committee of Social Rights, having been a member since 2017 and vice-president in 2021-22.

Research
Nolan's publications include works on human rights, economic and social rights and children's rights, and constitutional law. Her book on Children's Socio-economic Rights, Democracy and the Courts (2011), won the IALT Kevin Boyle Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Birks Book Prize. She is on the editorial board of the Human Rights Law Review, International Human Rights Law Review and the International Journal of Children's Rights.

In 2017, she led an ESRC IAA-funded collaborative project, Making Economic and Social Rights Real, in the University of Nottingham and this created for the Equality and Human Rights Commission of Great Britain, digital resources on economic and social rights, including videos, for use in civil society,  or by policymakers, academics and others to inform them on economic and social rights.

In 2018, Nolan was involved in drafting the Abidjan Principles on the Right to Education. In December 2017, she was invited to join the Scottish First Minister's Advisory Group on Human Rights Leadership, set up to make recommendations on how Scotland can 'lead by example' in human rights, including economic, social, cultural and environmental rights. In 2019-20, she served on the Scottish Government's Child Rights Working Group, creating a model which included the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child within Scots Law.

She served on the Steering Group of the British Academy's Childhood Policy Programme from 2020-2. In 2021 she was elected to the Executive Committee of the Association of Human Rights Institutes (AHRI).

Nolan was shortlisted at the 2021 Inspirational Women in Law Awards for 'Legal Academic of the Year'.

Her research created an international model on the theory and practice of children's rights and strategic litigation, known as  Advancing Child Rights Strategic Litigation (ACRiSL) from a three-year collaboration that she led, across Africa, Asia and Europe, which has been widely applied, including by the Commission for Children and Young People in Scotland.

Nolan's research has been cited by policy making bodies such as OHCHR, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, the UN Independent Expert on the effects of foreign debt on human rights, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health. And she is an advisor to United Nations groups on UN Special Procedures, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In 2022-23, she served on the advisory committee for UNCRC's General Comment No.26 on children's rights and the environment. UNCESRC asked Nolan to assist to incorporate children's rights and children's participation (and create a child-friendly version) of the General Comment on sustainable development and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. She has written on the impact of school closures on human rights, and the 2023 'cost of living crisis' on human rights.

Selected publications

 * Children's Socio-economic Rights, Democracy and the Courts (2011)
 * Human Rights and Public Finance - Budgets and the Promotion of Economic and Social Rights (2013)
 * Economic and Social Rights After the Global Financial Crisis (2014)
 * Children's Rights Strategic Litigation Toolkit (2022)