Rory O'Connell joined the Transitional Justice Institute (TJI) and School of Law in 2013 as Professor of Human Rights and Constitutional Law. He is the Director of Development & Partnerships – School of Law  (appointed 1 September 2023). He held the role of TJI Director from February 2014 to February 2020, and Research Director for Law from July 2017 to September 2023.   

Rory's research and teaching interests are in the areas of Human Rights and Equality, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory. He has published in the International Journal of Constitutional Law, European Law Journal, Legal Studies, European Human Rights Law Review and other journals. His books include Applying an International  Human Rights Framework to State Budget Allocations (Routledge), Human Rights and Public Finance (Hart), Legal Theory in the Crucible of Constitutional Justice (Ashgate).

His latest book Law, Democracy and the European Court of Human Rights (Cambridge 2020) examines the role of democracy in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, exploring the potential to use the European Convention on Human Rights to argue for more deliberative, participatory and inclusive democratic practices. In 2021 he was awarded the Faculty Senior Distinguished Research Award. 

Rory has been actively involved in supporting PhD researchers and is currently on 5 supervision panels. He has supervised 14 PhD researchers through to award of PhD and has examined 20 PhD theses as external or internal examiner.

Rory was a member of the project team on the ESRC project ‘Brexit and Northern Ireland: The Constitutional, Conflict Transformation, Human Rights and Equality Consequences’ #BrexitLawNI. He is also a member of the SAFEWATER project funded by the ESPRC and a member of the LSE-led GCRF Research Hub on Gender, Justice and Security. He is a member of the AHRC Peer Review College. 

Rory is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and has taught at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. He has taught Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; Dissertation Research Methods, Human Rights, Equality Law, Public Law & Constitutional Law, Comparative Law, EU Law, Torts, Jurisprudence.

Rory studied at Tarbert Comprehensive School and then studied law at University College Dublin (UCD). During his degree, he spent a year as an ERASMUS student at the Université de Rouen. In 1992, he graduated with a Bachelor of Civil Law (European Legal Studies) degree (First Class, Joint First Place) and received a UCD Open Postgraduate scholarship. He proceeded to write an LL.M. by thesis on The Irish Courts and Equality Before the Law, graduating in 1994, with First Class honours. He moved to the European University Institute (EUI), Florence to undertake a PhD on the theory of constitutional interpretation and graduated from the EUI in 1997, with Distinction. Rory's first lecturing post was in Comparative Law at Lancaster University Law School. From 2001 to 2013 he was a member of the Human Rights Centre, School of Law at Queen's University of Belfast.

Rory is on the committee of Scholars at Risk-Ireland (SAR-Ireland). Rory is on the Executive of the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ). He was the editor of the RightsNI Blog.  He has been actively involved in promoting international mobility in education: he served as one of the members of the UK team of Bologna Experts and was Director of the European Union Funded Intensive Programme (IP) on ‘The Borders of Europe’ 2009-2011.

Rory tweets @rjjoconnell and has a website at https://conlawfiles.org/.