Fiona de Londras joined Birmingham Law School as the inaugural Chair in Global Legal Studies in the summer of 2015. She was previously professor ar Durham Law School and lecturer at University College Dublin.
Fiona’s research and teaching interests are broadly in the fields of human rights and comparative constitutional law. In her work she particularly explores the role of rights in contentious policy contexts, asking whether and if so how human rights laws shape or influence policy choices, translated into law, in highly contested policy fields. Her work so far has explored these questions primarily in three contexts: counter-terrorism, reproductive rights (especially abortion law), and the development and domestic impacts of the European Convention on Human Rights. She also uses her legal academic expertise to influence policy, politics and legal decision making, having worked with politicians and civil society in Ireland, Gibraltar, the European Union, and the United Kingdom. Her work has been funded by the European Commission, the British Academy, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, and the Leverhulme Trust. In 2017 she was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize in law, awarded to recognise the achievement of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is exceptionally promising. This Prize is supporting her research agenda from November 2018-2021.
Professor de Londras is an associate of the Oxford Human Rights Hub, senior associate of the Global Justice Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs in the University of Toronto, and affiliate of the Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative in Emory University (Atlanta). She previously held advisory roles in Koç University (Istanbul), the University of Copenhagen, and University College Cork, and is on the advisory boards of major research projects based in the UK and Sweden. She was previously visiting professor at UCD School of Law, and adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales (Sydney).
Professor de Londras is the joint editor-in-chief of the Irish Yearbook of International Law. She was, for six years, co-editor of the journal Legal Studies in which capacity she also sat on the Executive of the Society of Legal Scholars; she continues to serve on the Society’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. She is a member of the editorial advisory committees of Irish Studies in International Affairs, the University of Wales Press series on International Law, the The Hague Justice Journal, the International Journal of Law in Context, and the IALS Open Book Service for Law. She has reviewed for publishers, journals and funders all over the world, and is a member of the AHRC Peer Review and Strategic colleges.
Professor de Londras regularly appears in print, online, radio, TV and documentary media discussing human rights and comparative constitutional law as well as current affairs more generally.
Fiona previously held (short-term) visiting positions at University of Peshawar (Pakistan), Emory Law School (Atlanta, GA), University of Minnesota, British Institute of International and Comparative Law (London), the Transitional Justice Institute (University of Ulster), Osgoode Hall Law School (York University, Toronto), the University of Oxford (affiliated to Oxford Human Rights Hub, the OMS Human Rights for Future Generations Programme, and Lincoln College), the University of Hong Kong, and the Australian National University. From 2010-2012 she was a research fellow of the Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law. She has delivered keynote lectures all over the world, including in Istanbul, Antwerp, and Dhaka. In January 2015 she was Genest Global Visitor at Osgoode Hall, as part of which she delivered the Pierre Genest Memorial Lecture. In 2015 she also delivered the Séan Lester Lecture for the Irish Society of International Law. In 2017 she was the Cheng Chan Lan Yue Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the University of Hong Kong School of Law. In 2018 she presented the Annual Human Rights Lecture of the Law Society of Ireland, and in November 2018 she delivered a Current Legal Problems lecture in UCL.