Health & Human Rights Unit
We build capacity through education and research
HHRU’s Director Thérèse Murphy co-founded Human Rights Preparedness, the blog of the 100-university Global Campus of Human Rights. It aims to build the rights-based approach to pandemics and other emergencies. Thérèse is also part of an international team that is creating a MOOC on scientific freedom and responsibility.
We develop partnerships and projects
With funding from the Irish Research Council and the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, HHRU’s Clay Ó Néill and Thérèse Murphy are working alongside partners from Edinburgh Law School, University College Cork and the Faculty of Public Health. Together they are creating a public health, ethics and law network.
We move knowledge into action, collaborating with civil society and national and international organisations
HHRU’s Clare Patton works with both WHO's Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child, and Adolescent Health and Breastival NI; Clare also founded the Lawyers’ Maternal and Infant Nutrition Collective. Our Director, Thérèse Murphy, is a member of the Moral & Ethical Advisory Group of the Department of Health and Social Care in London; Ireland’s National Research Ethics Committee for Medical Devices; and Northern Ireland’s HSC Clinical Ethics Forum.
We engage peer-to-peer in purposeful ways
One of HHRU’s student researchers, Gift Sotonye-Frank, winner of QUB’s Student of the Year, took time out from her doctorate to be vice president of the students’ union. Clay Ó Néill sits on the board of two academic law journals, the Medical Law Review and the Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly; Thérèse Murphy coedits a book series on law and health and sits on the editorial board of the Human Rights Law Review.
We mentor the next generation
Our first EU Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow, Dr Patrycja Dabrowska-Klosinska, moved from Warsaw with her young family in order to work on the following question: How do judges resolve the conflict between individual human rights and public health measures in global pandemics? During her time at HHRU, the university selected Patrycja as Postdoctoral Researcher of the Year.
HHRU’s current Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow is Dr Stefano Angeleri. Stefano is collaborating with the Universidad del Rosario in Colombia to examine the right to health of irregular migrants.
Dr Amrei Müller, our first research fellow, moved from Oslo with a three-year Leverhulme Trust award to investigate health care in conflict. Amrei is extending this work via a five-year Ad Astra award at University College Dublin.
Clare Patton began her engagement with HHRUvia a NINE postdoctoral fellowship funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council.