Professor Kathryn McNeilly's research expertise lies in the areas of public international law, international human rights law, and international legal theory. Her work has explored topics including international human rights monitoring, United Nations human rights structures, and the history of international human rights law. Her recent research has led development of an emerging body of scholarship on the connection between international human rights law and time. This explores how concepts of time and temporality can be used as tools to better understand the theory and operation of human rights law internationally.

Kathryn is the editor of the landmark edited collection The Times and Temporalities of International Human Rights Law (Hart, 2022, with Dr Ben Warwick). Her first monograph entitled Human Rights and Radical Social Transformation: Futurity, Alterity, Power (Routledge, 2017) was shortlisted for the 2018 Hart-SLSA Early Career Prize.

In 2019-20, Kathryn was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship to investigate issues of time and materiality in international human rights law monitoring. In 2018, Kathryn was awarded the QUB Vice Chancellor's Early Career Research Prize. This University-wide Prize recognises a scholar whose research demonstrates outstanding significance and excellence in the first 5 years of their career.

Kathryn's work has been presented widely. In the 2025-26 academic year she is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London. She has held previous visiting scholarships at institutions including the University of British Columbia, funded by the County Antrim Grand Jury Bursary, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, and the School of Law at the University of Birmingham.

Kathryn is an Editorial Board Member of leading international journal Human Rights Law Review. She is a member of the Royal Irish Academy's Ethical, Political, Legal and Philosophical Studies Committee and a member of the Peer Review Colleges of the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Kathryn has taught widely at UG and PGT levels across the areas of Legal Theory, International Human Rights Law, Equity, and Gender and the Law.

Kathryn has undertaken a number of strategic leadership roles including the School's Director of Research and Athena SWAN Champion.

In the latter role, Kathryn led the School of Law's successful application for a Bronze Athena SWAN Award. This national Award recognises the School's commitment to gender equality and addressing of challenges in this area.

Kathryn was awarded the Outstanding Leadership Award for her work in this area at the Queen's Staff Excellence Awards 2018.

She is the Co-Champion of the Queen's Gender Initiative Academic Mentoring Programme.