Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin Appointed Council of State of Ireland
On March 31, Ireland's President Catherine Connolly appointed Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin to serve as a member of the Council of State of Ireland.
The Irish Constitution provides for a Council of State to aid and counsel the President on all matters on which the President may consult them.
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin is a Regents Professor, Robina Professor of Law, Public Policy and Society, and faculty director of the University of Minnesota Law School's Human Rights Center. Ní Aoláin is concurrently professor of law at the Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is an elected fellow of the Royal Irish Academy and Fellow of the British Academy. She has held visiting positions at Harvard Law School, Yale University, Princeton University, the Geneva Academy (Switzerland), Juan Carlos III University (Spain) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Ní Aoláin is the recipient of numerous academic awards and honours including the Leverhulme Fellowship, British Academy Awards, the Alon Prize, the Robert Schumann Scholarship, a European Commission award, Fulbright scholarship and the Lawlor fellowship. She has served on the Board of the Committee on the Administration of Justice, a Belfast-based human rights organisation since 1989, and is currently its Vice-Chair. She was appointed K.C (Hons) by King Charles of England in 2024. Ní Aoláin is the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights while Countering Terrorism (2017- 2023). She was appointed as Commissioner to the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic in 2025.
