Rate My Professor Catherine O’Rourke

Professor Catherine O’Rourke is a Full Professor in Law at Dublin City University’s School of Law and Government, where she joined in October 2025 with a €2 million European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant for her project ‘Centring Care in International Law’ (CAREINTLAW). This five-year initiative critiques the limitations of international law in addressing gendered harms, advocating a care-centred framework drawing on feminist care theory to reconceptualize core principles, institutions, and processes of international law. O’Rourke’s career trajectory includes her prior role as Professor of Global Law at Durham Law School. Earlier, at Ulster University School of Law, she served as Director of the Transitional Justice Institute from 2020 to 2021, Gender Research Coordinator from 2010 to 2020, and Senior Lecturer in Human Rights and International Law. She also holds a Senior Fellowship at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne.

Specializing in gender, conflict, and international law, her expertise spans international humanitarian law, international human rights law, international criminal law, and the UN Security Council’s Women, Peace and Security agenda, including CEDAW implementation. O’Rourke engages in policy advisory roles for the Irish and UK governments, the United Nations, UN Women, the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, and the International Criminal Court Trust Fund for Victims. Her seminal publications include the monograph Women’s Rights in Armed Conflict under International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2020), awarded the Kevin Boyle Book Prize (2020-2021) by the Irish Association of Law Teachers and an Honorable Mention by the American Society of International Law’s Women in International Law Interest Group (2023). Another key work is Gender Politics in Transitional Justice (Routledge, 2013), derived from her PhD, which earned the Basil Chubb Prize for the best PhD in politics from an Irish university (2010). Recent peer-reviewed articles have appeared in the International Journal of Constitutional Law, International Review of the Red Cross, and Human Rights Quarterly. Additional honors include the Ulster University Distinguished Researcher Award (2019) and the Irish Fulbright Scholar Award (2016). Her work significantly influences feminist international legal scholarship and practice.