Thérèse Murphy

Professor Thérèse Murphy's work focuses on human rights law and practice. She is particularly interested in health and human rights, including the right to science. 

Thérèse welcomes expressions of interest from prospective PhD students who want to conduct original work on: (1) health and human rights; or (2) science, technology and human rights. She is also keen to hear from those who want to work on other topics within the human rights field, or on health law and ethics.

Thérèse has particular expertise as a mentor to postdoctoral research fellows. As part of the Health & Human Rights Unit, which she established at Queen's Belfast, she has mentored early-career researchers funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the UK's Economic & Social Research Council, and the European Commission's Marie Sklodowska-Curie scheme.

Thérèse holds a UK university prize for teaching, the Lord Dearing Award for Teaching & Learning. 

She has wide-ranging expertise in the design of undergraduate modules, including more than 20 years leading courses for beginning law students. On the postgraduate side, Thérèse led the team that introduced Gender, Sexuality & Human Rights, the first such option on a Taught Master's programme in the UK. 

Working with UNESCO and the Global Campus of Human Rights, Thérèse co-designed the first-ever Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on science and human rights. In 2025 a new 5-week MOOC was released. Co-designed by Thérèse, along with colleagues from the Global Campus of Human Rights, the Danish Institute for Human Rights and the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law, it deals with a human rights-based approach to AI.

Thérèse is chairperson of the European Master's in Human Rights & Democratisation, an interdisciplinary postgraduate programme sponsored by the European Commission. In addition, she sits on the governing body of the Global Campus of Human Rights, a  network of more than 100 universities educating the next generation of human rights professionals.

She is co-founding editor of the Human Rights Preparedness blog, co-editor of Hart Publishing's book series on Law and Health, and a longstanding member of the editorial board of Oxford University Press' Human Rights Law Review. For a number of years, she acted as an advisor to the British Council.

Thérèse is a member of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies, which provides independent advice to the European Commission. She is also a member of Ireland's National Research Ethics Committee for Medical Devices, Northern Ireland's Health & Social Care Clinical Ethics Forum, and the Life and Medical Sciences Committee of the Royal Irish Academy. From 2019-2022, she was a member of the Moral & Ethical Advisory Group of the Department of Health and Social Care in London; currently, she is part of its ethical advisory group on water fluoridation.

At Queen's Belfast, Thérèse co-directs the Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership sponsored by the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council. Previously, she led the law and society pathway that is part of the ESRC NINE Doctoral Training Partnership. 

Awards for Thérèse's work have come from a range of sources. She has been a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard Law School, a Holding Redlich Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Monash University, a Visiting Research Professor at the Law & Innovation Group at Newcastle University, and both a Jean Monnet Fellow and a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute in Italy. She has also won awards from two of the UK's research councils and the Canadian High Commission, and she is an elected fellow of the UK's national Academy of Social Sciences.

From 2022-2024, Thérèse was the Raoul Wallenberg Visiting Chair in Human Rights & Humanitarian Law and Conjoint Professor at the Faculty of Law at Lund University, where she led a project on the future of human rights.

Thérèse studied law at University College Dublin and Cambridge University, and became a member of King's Inns, Dublin where she was admitted to the Bar.

Prior to joining Queen's Belfast, she was professor of law at the University of Nottingham, where she co-founded the Human Rights Law Centre's specialist unit on economic and social rights.