Staff

Professor Fiona de Londras, BCL, LL.M, PhD (NUI)

Professor in the Durham Law School

Telephone: +44 (0) 191 33 46856

Room number: PCL137

Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing

(email at fiona.de-londras@durham.ac.uk)

Fiona de Londras joined Durham Law School as Professor of Law and Co-Director of Durham Human Rights Centre in September 2012. She lectures and publishes widely in the fields of human rights and comparative constitutional law and has presented her work across Europe, in Canada, the United States, Australia, Pakistan and South Africa. At Durham, Professor de Londras teaches public law with a particular focus on human rights, counter-terrorism and constitutionalism.

Fiona is especially interested in how crises impact on structures and principles of effective rights protection and in the role of human rights law and discourse in campaigns for law reform in the areas of reproductive rights and sexual orientation. Although her published research has largely focused on terrorism-related crises, Fiona increasingly works on how crises of capacity (particularly in international human rights institutions) impact on the effectiveness of human rights structures and principles. Fiona’s research has been published in leading international peer–reviewed journals such as Human Rights Quarterly, the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, the Modern Law Review, the Journal of Law and Society and the American Journal of Comparative Law.

As well as article-length outputs, Fiona is the author of a number of monographs. The most recent—Detention in the ‘War on Terror’: Can Human Rights Fight Back?—was published by Cambridge University Press in 2011 and has been described as “a compelling and rich discussion of moral panic theory and its relevance to a textured understanding of responses to terrorist violence” that is “a must-read book for 2012” (review by Prof. Fionnuala ní Aoláin). In 2010 Fiona co-authored (with Dr Cliona Kelly) the first comprehensive analysis of the operation of Ireland’s ECHR Act 2003 in The European Convention on Human Rights Act: Operation, Impact and Analysis (RoundHall). Reviewing this book in 2011, Dr Neil Maddox wrote that "In the same way as John Kelly’s Irish Constitutional Law laid the intellectual foundation for the development of the fruitful and wide-ranging jurisprudence on the Irish Constitution; one hopes that this superbly researched, tightly written, and provocative book will sow a similar seed into the minds of Irish lawyers and judges".

Fiona is now completing work on her next book, Privatised Sovereign Performance, Counter-Terrorism and Endangered Rights to be published by Cambridge University Press in early 2014. This book explores the changing nature of the counter-terrorist state inasmuch as it increasingly involves non-state actors operating in a non-transparent way and without being subjected to the kinds of accountability mechanisms we tend to rely on to maintain constitutionalism and protect human rights. Fundamentally, de Londras problematises the phenomenon she calls ‘privatised sovereign performance’ from a perspective that sees transparency as core to accountability and constitutionalism. In February 2013 Fiona presented one of the accountability ideas in the book--'wikountability'--at TEDx Goodenoigh College, the video of which can be viewed here.

As of May 2013, Fiona is leading an international collaboration of seven partners on an EU-funded project entitled SECILE-Securing Europe through Counter-Terrorism: Impact, Legitimacy and Effectiveness. This 18-month project brings together a wide variety of operational and disciplinary perspectives to propose new conceptual understandings of, and ways of assessing, the impact, legitimacy and effectiveness of EU counter-terrorist measures. The project is funded through the FP7 programme, which is providing a total of €703,000 support to the consortium, approximately €200,000 of which funds the Durham contribution. You can find out more about the project at www.secile.eu

Fiona is joint editor-in-chief of the Irish Yearbook of International Law and co-editor of Legal Studies, the journal of the Society of Legal Scholars of the UK and Ireland. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Society of Legal Scholars and a Global Affiliate of the Vulnerability and the Human Condition project based in Emory University. She is a member of the advisory boards of the Centre for European Constitutionalization and Security at the University of Copenhagen and of her alma mater, the UCC Department and Faculty of Law. From 2012-2014, Fiona holds a visiting professorial fellowship at the University of New South Wales and, from 2013, she is a Visiting Professor at University College Dublin.

Fiona has previously held visiting positions at University of Peshawar (Pakistan), Emory Law School (Atlanta, GA), University of Minnesota, British Institute of International and Comparative Law (London), the Transitional Justice Institute (University of Ulster), and Osgoode Hall Law School (York University, Toronto). From 2010-2012 she was a research fellow of the Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law.

Fiona regularly advises Irish politicians and civil society groups on the formulation of rights-related legislative proposals, particularly in relation to abortion and same-sex marriage, and is a regular commentator on radio, television and in newspapers. In 2009 Fiona founded Human Rights in Ireland, a collaborative academic blog with a focus on human rights issues in Ireland and on Irish scholarship about human rights theory, practice, law and politics more generally.

Apart from being an academic, Fiona is a political junkie, bad golfer and foodie. She lives with her partner and cat, who (needless to say) is the real head of the household.

Research Interests

Comparative Constitutional Law
Constitutionalism and Counter-Terrorism
European Human Rights Law
Gender Based Violence in International Law
Human Rights

Grants Awarded

2013: Critical Debates on Counter-Terrorist Judicial Review (£9998.00 from The British Academy)
2013: Securing Europe Through Counter-Terrorism - Impact, Legitimacy and Effectiveness (£166166.77 from European Commission)

Selected Publications

Articles: newspaper

de Londras, F. (2012). An Open Media will Grasp Twitter to Make Itself More Accountable--and Expert. Irish Times (22 August 2012).
de Londras, F. (2012). Europe's Extraordinary Rendition Problem. Irish Times 30 April
de Londras, F. (2012). Justice and Security Bill: Section 13 is an Affront. Guardian Online 29 May 2012.
de Londras, F. (2012). Let's not let popularism masquerade as sovereignty on prisoner votes. Guardian Online
de Londras, F. (2011). Judges' Pay: The Devil is in the Detail. Irish Examiner 22 October 2011.
de Londras, Fiona (2010). De Valera's Constitution Continues to Serve us Well. Irish Times
de Londras, F. (2010). Ireland still in denial about abortion. The Guardian 17 December 2010.
de Londras, Fiona (2008). Complexities Behind the Guantanamo's Promise. Irish Times 18 November 2008.

Books: authored

de Londras, F. (2011). Detention in the 'War on Terror': Can Human Rights Fight Back?. Cambridge University Press.
de Londras, F. (2011). Principles of Irish Property Law. Clarus Press.
de Londras, F. & Kelly, C. (2010). European Convention on Human Rights Act: Operation, Impact and Analysis. Roundhall/Thomson Reuters.
de Londras, F. (2007). Principles of Irish Property Law. Clarus Press.

Books: edited

de Londras, Fiona & Mullally, Siobhan (2013). Irish Yearbook of International Law 2011. Hart Publishing.
de Londras, F. & Mullally, S. (2012). Irish Yearbook of International Law 2009-2010. Hart Publishnig.

Edited works: contributions

de Londras, Fiona (2013). Counter-Terrorist Detention and International Human Rights Law. In Research Handbook on Terrorism and International Law. Saul, Ben Edward Elgar.
de Londras, F. (2013). International Humanitarian Law and the Protection of Women in the Ad Hoc Tribunals. In Applying International Humanitarian Law in Judicial and Quasi Judicial Bodies: International and National Aspects. Soloman, Solon & Maogoto, Jackson TCM Asser.
de Londras, Fiona (2013). Prevention, detention, and extraordinariness. In Guantánamo and Beyond: Exceptional Courts and Military Commissions in Comparative Perspective. Ní Aoláin, Fionnuala & Gross, Oren Cambridge University Press.
de Londras, Fiona (2013). Privatized Counter-Terrorist Surveillance: Constitutionalism Undermined. In Surveillance, Counter-Terrorism and Comparative Constitutionalism. George Williams, Fergal F Davis & Nicola McGarrity Routledge.
de Londras, Fiona & Morgan, David Gwynn (2012). Constitutional Amendment in Ireland. In Engineering Constitutional Change: A Comparative Perspective on Europe, Canada and the USA. Xenophon Contiades ( Routledge. 179-202.
de Londras, Fiona (2011). Privatized Sovereign Performance: Regulating in the ‘Gap’ Between Security and Rights. In The Challenge of Transnational Private Regulation: Conceptual and Constitutional Debates. Scott, Colin, Caffagi, Fabrizzio & Senden, Linda Wiley Blackwell.
de Londras, Fiona (2010). Dualism, Domestic Courts and the Rule of International Law. In Ius Gentium: The Rule of Law in Comparative Perspective. Sellers, Mortimer & Tomaszewski, Tadeusz Springer.
de Londras, Fiona (2010). Sexual Violence before the ICTY and ICTR. In Feminist Legal Theory: Transcending the Boundaries of Law. Fineman, Martha Routledge.
de Londras, Fiona (2010). Terrorism as an International Crime. In Routledge Handbook of International Criminal Law. Schabas, William & Bernaz, Nadia London: Routledge. 169-180.
de Londras, Fiona (2009). Confronting the Porrajmos. In Evoking Genocide: Scholars and Activists Describe the Work that Shaped their Lives. Jones, Adam The Key.
de Londras, Fiona (2007). Telling Stories and Hearing Truths: Providing an Effective Remedy to Genocidal Sexual Violence against Women. In The Criminal Law of Genocide: International. Comparative and Contextual Aspects. Henham, R. & Behrens, P. Ashgate.
de Londras, Fiona (2007). The Religiosity of Jus Cogens: A Moral Argument for Compliance?. In Religion, human rights and international lawa critical examination of Islamic state practices. Rehman, Javaid & Breau, Susan Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. 6: 247-280.

Edited works: journals

de Londras, Fiona (2011). Special Issue on the Judges' Remuneration Referendum. Irish Law Times.

Journal papers: academic

de Londras, Fiona (2013). Dual Functionality and the Persistent Frailty of the European Court of Human Rights. European Human Rights Law Review (1): 38-46.
de Londras, Fiona & Dzehtsiarou, Kanstantsin (2013). II. Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, A, B & C v Ireland, Decision of 17 December 2010. International and Comparative Law Quarterly 62(1): 250-262.
de Londras, Fiona & Graham, Laura (2013). Impossible Floodgates and Unworkable Analogies in the Irish Abortion Debate. Irish Journal of Legal Studies
de Londras, Fiona (2013). Suicide and Abortion: Analysing the Legislative Options in Ireland. Medico-Legal Journal of Ireland 19(1).
de Londras, F. (2012). Closing Guantánamo Bay: The Triumph of Politics over Law? Public Law 18-26.
de Londras, Fiona (2011). A ‘New Politics’ Without the Seanad: Concerns from a Human Rights Perspective. Irish Law Times 48-54.
de Londras, F. (2011). Can counter-terrorist internment ever be legitimate?. Human rights quarterly 33(3): 593-619.
de Londras, Fiona (2011). Introduction: Special Issue on the Judges' Remuneration Referendum. Irish Law Times 29: 189.
de Londras, F. (2011). Privatized Sovereign Performance: Regulating in the 'Gap' between Security and Rights?. Journal of Law and Society 38(1): 96-118.
de Londras, Fiona (2011). The Judicial Pay Referendum in its Broader Context of Dáil Empowerment: Unbalancing Powers?. Irish Law Times 29(14/15): 202-205.
de Londras, F. & Davis, F. (2010). Controlling the Executive in Times of Terrorism: Competing Perspectives on Effective Oversight Mechanisms. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 30(1): 19-47.
de Londras, F. & Kingston, S. (2010). Rights, Security and Conflicting International Obligations: Exploring Inter-Jurisdictional Judicial Dialogues in Europe'. American Journal of Comparative Law 58(2): 359-413.
de Londras, F. (2009). International Human Rights Law and Constitutional Rights: In Favour of Synergy. International Review of Constitutionalism 9(2): 307-328
de Londras, F. (2008). Guantanamo Bay: Towards Legality?. Modern Law Review 71(1): 36-58
de Londras, F. (2008). International Decision: Saadi v Italy. American Journal of International Law 102(3): 616-622.
de Londras, F. (2008). The Technical Defence to the Judgment Mortgage: Time to Say Goodbye? Conveyancing and Property Law Journal 13(1).
de Londras, F. (2008). What Human Rights Law Could Do: Lamenting the Absence of an International Human Rights Law Approach in Boumediene & Al Odah. Israel Law Review 41(3): 562-595.
de Londras, F. (2007). Hamdan v Rumsfeld. Netherlands International Law Review 54(3): 539-550.
de Londras, F. (2007). In the Shadow of Hamdan v Rumsfeld: Habeas Corpus Rights of Guantánamo Bay Detainees'. Irish Criminal Law Journal 17(2): 8-16.
de Londras, Fiona (2007). Ireland's Potential Liability for Extraordinary Renditions through Shannon Airport. Irish Law Times 106-110.
de Londras, F. (2007). Shannon, Saadi and Ireland’s Reliance on Diplomatic Assurances Under Article 3 of the European Convention. Irish Yearbook of International Law 2: 79-90.
de Londras, F. (2007). The Right to Challenge the Lawfulness of Detention: An International Perspective on U.S. Detention of Suspected-Terrorists. Journal of Conflict and Security Law 12(2): 223-260.

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