Aoife Nolan

Aoife Nolan, LL.B (Dublin), PhD (EUI) is Professor of International Human Rights Law and Director of the Human Rights Law Centre's Economic and Social Rights Unit at the University of Nottingham School of Law. She simultaneously serves as President of the Council of Europe's European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR), the leading European monitoring mechanism on economic and social rights, having joined the Committee in 2017 and served as Vice-President in 2021-22. Nolan is also an Academic Expert at Doughty Street Chambers where she co-leads the Children's Rights Group and sits on the Steering Group of Doughty Street International.

Professor Nolan is a leading scholar in human rights law with particular expertise in economic and social rights and children's rights. Her recent work has focused on constitutional and international human rights of future generations, child rights and intergenerational justice, as well as climate justice litigation and adjudication. She led the groundbreaking Advancing Child Rights Strategic Litigation (ACRiS) project which created a model for child rights-consistent strategic litigation practice now used by climate justice lawyers worldwide.

Nolan's scholarly work has been extensively cited by international human rights actors including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN Special Rapporteurs on various rights, and the Commissioner for Human Rights at the Council of Europe. She was one of the drafters of the Abidjan Principles on the Right to Education (2018) and has advised numerous international bodies including UN treaty committees and Special Procedures.

• IALT Kevin Boyle Book Prize (for Children's Socio-economic Rights, Democracy and the Courts)
• Shortlisted for Society of Legal Scholars Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship
• Shortlisted for 'Legal Academic of the Year' at the Inspirational Women in Law Awards (2021)
• Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (2025)

Professor Nolan has held significant advisory roles including membership on the Scottish First Minister's Advisory Group on Human Rights Leadership (2017-), the Scottish Government's Child Rights Working Group (2019-2020), and advisory committees for UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. She has produced influential reports for the World Bank and Council of Europe on fiscal constraints and human rights, and protecting children from poverty. Currently leading the three-year ACRiS research project funded by the Global Campus of Human Rights-Right Livelihood Collaboration, Nolan continues to shape human rights discourse globally.