Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin Elected a Fellow of the British Academy

July 18, 2025

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin FBA, KC (Hons), has been elected a Fellow of the British Academy, in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the humanities and social sciences.

This year, 58 new Fellows have been elected from 25 universities across the United Kingdom, alongside 30 International Fellows from universities in the United States, Ireland, South Africa, Singapore, China, Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, and Cyprus. Four Honorary Fellows have also been elected in recognition of their exceptional achievements in music, art, journalism, and librarianship.

The new cohort of Fellows of the British Academy represents a broad spectrum of expertise from the study of twentieth-century music and the structural causes of poverty to environmental law and the neuroscience of memory, language, and cognition. They join a community of over 1,800 scholars who share a commitment to advancing the humanities and social sciences.

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin FBA, KC (Hons) is a University Regents Professor, the Robina Chair in Law, Public Policy, and Society, and faculty director of Minnesota Law's Human Rights Center. She is concurrently a professor of law at the Queen's University of Belfast, School of Law. In 2017, Professor Ní Aoláin was appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism. In this capacity, she worked closely with states and United Nations entities to advance human rights protections in some of the most challenging contexts globally. The States re-elected her for an additional three-year term in 2020, and her term ended in November 2023.

Prof. Ní Aoláin was also recently named a Fulbright U.S. Scholar for the 2025-26 academic year in the Fulbright-Schuman European Union Affairs Program. She was elected to the International Commission of Jurists in 2023, and in 2024, she received a lifetime appointment as Honorary King's Counsel (KC Hon) by His Majesty King Charles III of the United Kingdom.

British Academy July 18 Press Release

Professor Fionnuala NiAolain stands in front of a view of downtown Minneapolis

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin FBA, KC (Hons)

Photo: Leslie Plesser

Fionnuala Ní Aoláin

Honorary Kings Counsel

Regents Professor

Robina Chair in Law, Public Policy, and Society

Faculty Director, Human Rights Center

Professor, Queen's University of Belfast, School of Law, Northern Ireland

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