Catherine O'Rourke

Guest Author

Dr Catherine O’Rourke (@DrCORourke) is Director of the Transitional Justice Institute and Senior Lecturer in Human Rights and International Law in the School of Law, Ulster University, Northern Ireland. She researches, teaches and engages in policy work in the fields of gender, conflict, transitional justice and international law. Her work has been published widely, including in the European Journal of International Law, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, International Journal of Transitional Justice and Harvard Journal of Human Rights. Her monograph ‘Women’s Rights in Armed Conflict under International Law’ (Cambridge University Press, 2020) examines the regulation of women’s rights in conflict under international humanitarian law, international criminal law, international human rights law and the United Nations Security Council and, critically, how the regimes overlap and interact. Her scholarship has been recognized with a Distinguished Research Fellowship, Ulster University (2019/20), an Irish Fulbright Scholar Award (2016/17) and the Basil Chubb Prize (2010) for the best PhD in politics produced in an Irish university. Catherine holds an LLB Law with Politics from Queen’s University Belfast and MSc Gender from the London School of Economics. Her PhD, from Ulster University Transitional Justice Institute, was subsequently published as a monograph, ‘Gender Politics in Transitional Justice’ (Routledge, 2013). She works with the Irish and UK governments, the United Nations and several non-governmental organizations in policy work related to her expertise. She is regularly commissioned by intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations to conduct expert research, such as UN Women and the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, and the International Criminal Court Trust Fund for Victims.