Dr Meghan Campbell

Photo of Meghan Campbell

Birmingham Law School
Reader in International Human Rights Law

Contact details

Email
m.campbell.1@bham.ac.uk
View my research portal
Address
Birmingham Law School
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Meghan Campbell is a Reader in International Human Rights Law. Her research focuses on women’s economic inequality and overlooked aspects of women's equality including on rurality, the procedural rules on international access to justice and temporality.

Her first monograph, Women, Poverty, Equality (Hart 2018) examined women's poverty in the CEDAW and her second, supported with a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, Hanging in the Balance: The Function of Justification in Achieving Women's Equality (Hart 2025), looks at the relationship between women's equality and limits on rights. She is the editor of two collection, Human Rights and Equality in Education (Policy Press 2018) and Feminist Frontiers in Climate Justice (Edward-Elgar 2023).

She has collaborated on a range of human rights projects with the International Labour Organization, the World Health Organization, the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, the South African Human Rights Commission and civil society groups including the Equal Rights Trust and Centre for Child Rights. She has acted as an independent expert advisor to the Council of Europe on comprehensive sexuality education and the UK Cabinet Office on equal pay.

Qualifications

  • LLB, University of Manitoba (2008)
  • Call to the Bar, Province of Manitoba, Canada (2009)
  • LLM (International Law), University of Edinburgh (2011)
  • DPhil, University of Oxford (2016)

Biography

Meghan Campbell is Reader in International Human Rights Law at the University of Birmingham.

Prior to this, she was a Weston Junior Research Fellow at New College, Oxford University and a Crown Attorney for the Province of Manitoba (Canada).

She completed her LLB at the University of Manitoba, her LLM at the University of Edinburgh and DPhil at the University of Oxford.

She is the Executive Producer of RightsUp podcast and of the World Health Organization documentary Right to a Better World.  

Teaching

  • Canadian Constitutional Law - Module Leader
  • Public Law - Co-Module Leader
  • Foundations of International Law and Globalisation 

Postgraduate supervision

Gender Equality International Human Rights Law Socio-Economic Rights Enforcement of Rights

Find out more - our PhD Law  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Research

Meghan Campbell pursues several harmonious strands of research. Her research investigates how the international and national legal systems can respond to women’s poverty, focusing on the potential of equality and anti-discrimination law. Her research has touched upon the right to education, sexual and reproductive health rights, rural inequality and the procedural aspects of international accountability mechanisms. Her future projects offer a comparative critique of how apex courts adjudicate whether the State is constitutionally permitted to limit women’s equality.  

Other activities

Publications

Highlight publications

Campbell, M 2025, Hanging in the Balance: The Function of Justification in Achieving Women's Equality. 1st edn, Bloomsbury Publishing.

Albertyn, C, Campbell, M, Alvair Grarcia, H, Fredman, S & Machado, M (eds) 2023, Feminist Frontiers in Climate Justice: Gender Equality, Climate Change and Rights. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781803923796

Campbell, M 2018, Women, poverty, equality: the role of CEDAW . 1st edn, Hart Publishing. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781509909704

Recent publications

Article

Campbell, M 2024, 'Does the UDHR Matter for Women's Equality?', European Human Rights Law Review, vol. 2024, no. 1, pp. 13-22. <https://uk.westlaw.com/Document/I794CCF30CCC311EEA118C0091C0D8203/View/FullText.html>

Campbell, M & Warwick, B 2024, 'Temporality and the Construction of Women’s Structural Inequality', Constitutional Court Review, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 115-135. https://doi.org/10.2989/CCR.2024.0005

Campbell, M 2021, 'Might makes right: the two child limit and justifiable discrimination against women and children', Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law. https://doi.org/10.1080/09649069.2021.1999111

Campbell, M 2021, 'The austerity of lone motherhood: discrimination law and benefit reform', Oxford Journal of Legal Studies. https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqab018

Campbell, M, Fredman, S & Reeves, A 2020, 'Palliation or protection: How should the right to equality inform the government’s response to Covid-19?', International Journal of Discrimination and the Law, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 183-202. https://doi.org/10.1177/1358229120969611

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Campbell, M 2024, Carol Harlow, 'Public Law and Popular Justice': Standing: The Window into Accountability and Participatory Democracy. in P O'Brien & B Yong (eds), Leading Works in Public Law. 1 edn, Analysing Leading Works in Law, Routledge. <https://www.routledge.com/Leading-Works-in-Public-Law/OBrien-Yong/p/book/9780367076962>

Campbell, M 2024, It’s All Been Done: Individual Communications, the Exhaustion Rule and Expanding and Evidencing Domestic Barriers to Justice. in M Dembour, C Klocker & D Casalin (eds), Evidence in International Human Rights Adjudication. Cambridge University Press.

Campbell, M 2023, A Greener CEDAW: Adopting a women’s substantive equality approach to climate change. in C Albertyn, M Campbell, H Alviar García, S Fredman & M Rodriguez de Assis Machado (eds), Feminist Frontiers in Climate Justice: Gender Equality, Climate Change and Rights. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., pp. 90–115. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781803923796.00009

Campbell, M 2023, Like birds of a feather? ICESCR and women's socioeconomic equality. in RJ Cook (ed.), Frontiers of Gender Equality : Transnational Legal Perspectives. Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights, University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 153-174. <https://www.pennpress.org/9781512823561/frontiers-of-gender-equality/>

Campbell, M & Connors, J 2023, Optional Protocol. in P Schulz, R Halperin-Kaddari, B Rudolf & M Freeman (eds), The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and its Optional Protocol: A Commentary. 2 edn, Oxford Commentaries on International Law. <https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-un-convention-on-the-elimination-of-all-forms-of-discrimination-against-women-and-its-optional-protocol-9780192862815>

Campbell, M 2023, The Proportionality of an Economic Crisis. in S Atrey & S Fredman (eds), Exponential Inequalities . Oxford University Press, pp. 79-96. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192872999.003.0005

Campbell, M & Byrnes, A 2022, Article 2. in P Schulz, R Halperin-Kaddari, B Rudolf & M Freeman (eds), The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and its Optional Protocol: A Commentary. 2 edn, Oxford Commentaries on International Law, Oxford University Press. <https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-un-convention-on-the-elimination-of-all-forms-of-discrimination-against-women-and-its-optional-protocol-9780192862815>

Campbell, M & Byrnes, A 2022, Article 24. in P Schulz, R Halperin-Kaddari, B Rudolf & M Freeman (eds), The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and its Optional Protocol : A Commentary. 2 edn, Oxford Commentaries on International Law, Oxford University Press. <https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-un-convention-on-the-elimination-of-all-forms-of-discrimination-against-women-and-its-optional-protocol-9780192862815>

Campbell, M 2021, Cooperating to continuously improve. in J Hohmann & B Goldblatt (eds), The Right to the Continuous Improvement of Living Conditions: Responding to Complex Global Challenges. 1st edn, Oñati International Series in Law and Society, Bloomsbury Publishing. <https://www.bloomsburyprofessional.com/uk/the-right-to-the-continuous-improvement-of-living-conditions-9781509947836/>

Commissioned report

Campbell, M, Daly, A & O'Sullivan, C 2025, Feasibility study on age-appropriate comprehensive sexuality education to strengthen responses for – inter alia – preventing and combating violence, including risky or harmful sexual behaviour by children. <https://edoc.coe.int/en/children-s-rights/12142-feasibility-study-on-age-appropriate-comprehensive-sexuality-education.html>

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

Meghan Campbell has media experience in education rights, gender equality, international human rights law and human rights in the UK

Media experience

Expertise

 

  • Human rights in the UK 
  • Education rights
  • Gender equality 
  • International human rights law
  • Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
  • Duty of Cooperation