My research brings together a variety of legal and political sites (international, regional, domestic, bodily) using a mixture of critical forms (feminism, legal theory, legal history, law and humanities) to ask questions about how legal orders were created, operate and function. My work critically examines how legal structures enable or prevent states, institutions and individuals to (not) act and the ramifications of these structures. My research queries accepted narratives on the evolution of legal governance but also the potential futures that could be pre-figured.

My monograph On Tyranny and the Global Legal Order (CUP, 2021) establishes a taxonomy of tyranny and authoritarianism, applying this to the current global legal order including examining tyrannicide and tyrannophobia. I am continuing this work through an examination of gendered tyranny, feminist tyrannicide and the global trend towards authoritarianism.  

My previous monograph, Constitutionalism in Global Constititionalisation (CUP, 2014) critically evaluates how constitutionalism is transplanted into the global legal order.

Current work includes looking at utopias, pre-figuration, manifestos and other forms and their roles in feminist constitutionalism, feminist International law and legal history alongside work on immutability and law and postcolonial constitutionalism on the island of Ireland. I am also co-authoring a monograph on Feminist Constitutionalism for Bristol University Press.

I also continue work Brexit and Northern Ireland. I was part of the ESRC funded Performing Identities project on Brexit and Northern Ireland, publications include the co-authored book Bordering Two Unions: Northern Ireland and Brexit (Policy Press, 2018) and that work is continuing.

With Maebh Harding at UCD, I was the recipient of an Irish Research Council Shared Island Grant for DFLW (Doing Feminist Legal Work), a network of scholars doing work on law and feminism across Northern Ireland and Ireland. I am the Co-Director of the Northern/Ireland Feminist Constitutions Project, having previously been Co-Director of the Northern Ireland Feminist Judgments Project. I also led the AHRC funded UN Gender Network project. 

I am one of the Co-leads of the British Irish Chapter of ICON*S

I am the Director of  NINE (Northern Ireland & North East) Doctoral Training Programme for QUB, and Deputy Director of the NINE programme.

Aoife worked at Durham University Law School for 15 years, having previously worked at the University of Galway. Aoife is a Senior Fellow of the Global Policy Institute.

Public law - Constititutional and International, Feminism (theory, history, drafting), Utopias, Tyranny, Authoritarianism, Pre-figuration. Legal and Constitutional Theory, Legal History, Law and Humanities, Law and Literature