Staff

David Harris

Co-Director

Professor David Harris co-founded the Human Rights Law Centre in 1993 and has served as Co-Director since that time. He taught Public International Law at The University of Nottingham for 40 years before becoming Professor Emeritus in 2003. 

Professor Harris has served as a member of the Committee of Independent Experts of the European Social Charter. He has also acted as a consultant for a number of Council of Europe projects advising accession states on implementing the European Convention on Human Rights. He has published a number of key works on the ECHR and international law, most recently the Fourth Edition of Law of the European Convention on Human Rights (with Michael O'Boyle, Ed Bates and Carla Buckley).

david.harris@nottingham.ac.uk

David Harris staff profile

Aoife Nolan

Co-Director

Professor of International Human Rights Law, HRLC Co-Director, Head of HRLC's Economic and Social Rights Unit

Aoife Nolan, LLB (Dublin), PhD (EUI), joined the School of Law as Professor of International Human Rights Law in 2012. On 30 November 2016, Aoife was elected as an independent expert to the Council of Europe's European Committee of Social Rights, the leading European monitoring mechanism on economic and social rights. In December 2017, Aoife was appointed to the Scottish First Minister's Advisory Group on Human Rights Leadership, which was tasked with making recommendations on how Scotland can lead by example in human rights, including economic, social, cultural and environmental rights (read the report). She is currently a member of the Scottish Government's Child Rights Working Group, which was convened to inform the development of a model that incorporates the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child into domestic law in Scotland.

From 2015-2018, she co-directed the Rights and Justice Research Priority Area, the world's largest cluster of rights and justice scholars, involving over 700 members from 22 different University centres. From 2013-15, she was Academic Lead of the interdisciplinary University of Nottingham Children and Childhood Network and the Nottingham Summer School on Child Rights.

She is an Academic Expert member of Doughty Street Chambers.

aoife.nolan@nottingham.ac.uk

Aoife Nolan staff profile

Agnes Flues

Co-ordinator

Agnes has been Co-ordinator of the Human Rights Law Centre since January 2012. She is responsible for the development of project ideas, funding applications, and project management in all areas of activity of the Centre, as well as financial and staff oversight. Before taking on this role, she worked for two years as Research Associate. She holds a European Master's Degree in Human Rights and Democratisation from EIUC, Venice, and a master's degree in International Relations and Human Rights from the University of Padua, Italy. In addition, she holds a PRINCE2® Practitioner certificate in Project Management.

agnes.flues@nottingham.ac.uk

Agnes Flues staff profile

Marie Auter

Research and Project Assistant

Marie joined the Human Rights Law Centre as a Research and Project Assistant in April 2018. Between 2018-2020, she conducted research for the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights under the Centre’s FRANET contract, and was the Assistant Editor of the International Human Rights Reports and of the Yearbook of the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. She currently is a Research Assistant to Dr Catherine Appleton (Life Imprisonment Worldwide Project) and Professor Aoife Nolan (Advancing Child Rights Strategic Litigation Project).

She has previously worked for the Observatoire International des Prisons – section française in Paris and for the International Network of Human Rights in Geneva. Marie holds an MA in Human Rights from University College London and two Bachelor’s degrees, in History and Spanish, from Sorbonne University. She is fluent in English, French and Spanish.

marie.auter@nottingham.ac.uk

Laura Wills

Research and Project Officer

Laura Wills joined the Human Rights Law Centre as Research and Project Officer in March 2014. Laura holds an LLM in Human Rights Law from the University of Bristol. Prior to arriving in Nottingham she was conducting research for the Human Rights Implementation Centre at the University of Bristol and worked as a Caseworker providing advocacy and information for asylum seekers at a Bristol based NGO.

Within her current role Laura conducts research under the Centre’s FRANET contract, assists with the design and implementation of the Centre’s bespoke training and capacity building programmes, is the Assistant Editor of the International Human Rights Reports and module convenor of the International Refugee Law module on HRLC's Distance Learning Course.

Laura is also the Director of HRLC's Refugee Clinic having co-founded the Clinic in January 2020. She oversee's the Clinic's casework and research and supervises the team of Student Caseworkers.

laura.wills@nottingham.ac.uk