About

Fionnuala Ní Aoláin is a University Regents Professor and holds the Robina Chair in Law, Public Policy, and Society at the University of Minnesota Law School. She is also the faculty director of the Human Rights Center at the University of Minnesota Law School. Additionally, she serves as a professor of law at Queen's University of Belfast, School of Law. Her expertise encompasses human rights, law, public policy, and society, with a focus on issues related to human rights and public policy. Her work involves research and leadership in these areas, contributing to academic and policy discussions on human rights and related fields.

Research topics

• Political science
• Law
• Sociology
• Criminology
• Law and economics

Selected publications

• Alternative Approaches to Counterterrorism

  2026-02-06

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter assesses the current state of the global, regional, and national counterterrorism architectures and their relationship to sustaining and enabling perpetual war. In doing so, it takes stock of the implications of (United Nations) U.N. Security Council resolutions and related treaty regimes that have entrenched a global counterterrorism architecture for nearly a quarter of a century. The chapter demonstrates that the expansion and institutionalization of counterterrorism measures have undermined the rule of law, eroded governance standards, and weakened civil liberties. Calling for a fundamental paradigm shift, the chapter argues that ending perpetual war requires dismantling existing security-centric models; reforming the U.N. counterterrorism architecture; making peace a policy imperative; supporting and enabling civil society in conflict zones; and reining in counterterrorism abuses. While these approaches are not novel, the persistent failure to implement them has normalized counterterrorism overreach and enabled systemic abuse. The long-term suppression of terrorist movements and development of sustainable approaches to extremist violence requires moving beyond militarized responses toward structural reforms.

  PublisherDOI

• Colombia, COVID-19, and the Colonial Trap: Reflections on the Politics of Knowledge Production

  Latin American Perspectives · 2025-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  The COVID-19 pandemic has made historical and contemporary colonial relationships between and within states more fraught. This complexity is apparent within the research process itself, adding a new dimension to debates on positionality and the politics of knowledge production. Drawing on critical approaches to International Relations, and in dialogue with an emerging literature on the implications of the pandemic for knowledge decolonization, we reflect on our experience as scholars from the UK/Ireland researching colonial legacy and Transitional Justice in Colombia. The aim of this autoethnographic article is to suggest how the COVID-19 pandemic affected inequalities between researchers based in Europe and participants in Latin America. Our findings are mixed. While Covid-related funding cuts undermined equity within relationships, the virtual field offered an opportunity to cultivate cooperation between researcher and participant and re-think issues of ethics, voice, and the research agenda itself. Finally, El Maestro Covid taught us valuable lessons on the colonial trap inherent in our endeavors.

  PublisherDOI

• A Reflection on the Cost of Counterterrorism for Civilian Protection in Armed Conflict

  2025-05-22

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Terrorism has wrought extraordinary harm and has rightfully earned a broad consensus on its objectionable nature. Yet terrorism lacks an agreed international definition. The insidious but effective rhetoric surrounding terrorism garners outrage that derails any questioning of whether the terrorist category itself is legitimate. This chapter examines how the umbrella of “counterterrorism” has regrettably legitimized a range of State actions to justify the exclusion of the protective norms of international humanitarian and human rights law. Terrorism-related legal frameworks and State practices have encroached upon the legal category of civilian. Masculinity tropes and validations overlay the internalized acceptance of who is (and who is not) a civilian, with distinct consequences for men as civilians in situations of armed conflict. The situation ongoing in northeast Syria highlights the extreme costs for the boy-child in situations where “terrorism” determines the legal rights of men and boys.

  PublisherDOI

• Where Are the Women?

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2025-10-22

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Counter-terrorism as a set of global norms, practices, and institutions has expanded steadily over the past two decades. The effect of a slew of new norms and a powerful set of interlocking institutions on the substance and implementation of international law has been considerable. This chapter will address the significance of the rise of a global architecture on counter-terrorism for women, exploring the masculinity and gendered nature of these institutions and processes, the representation and influence of women on the normative and institutional counter-terrorism architecture, and some of the regulatory consequences for women flowing from the law and practice of global counter-terrorism. The chapter primarily addresses the experiences of women and girls, accepting that men and boys also experience gender stereotyping in the counter-terrorism context and that masculinities and femininities also shape roles, expectations, and harms in this arena. Moreover, the social construction of gender binaries does not fully encompass the ways in which sexual minorities and LGBTQI persons experience the impact of counter-terrorism and countering (violent) extremism law and practice. An intersectional approach to counter-terrorism measures demonstrates how experiences of discrimination and human rights abuses compound as determined by other social identities, including race, ethnicity, religion, ability, age, sexuality, and beyond.

  PublisherDOI

• Masculinities And/Under Protracted Occupation

  2025-01-06 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  There is a dearth of conceptual and practical thinking about the diversity and forms of masculinity in occupation sites and what the implications of these manifestations are for the experience of conflict and ultimately its resolution. In order to address this gap, this chapter examines how protracted military occupation shapes conceptions and practices of masculinity, both civilian and military, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The chapter explores the ways in which masculinities enable, sustain, function, and are shaped by the practices of occupation and, in turn, play a central role in the construction of that practice. It analyses the regulation of space through the mechanism of checkpoints, controlled and operated by the occupying (Israeli) military, and through which men, boys, women, and girls must traverse to undertake the most mundane aspects of everyday life. The chapter views the checkpoint interface as capturing a set of experiences, realities, and harms that engage, construct, undo, and harm masculinities. While the focus is primarily on the experiences and navigation of occupation by Palestinian men, the chapter highlights the relational quality of men’s lives and, at key points, highlights the ways in which both Palestinian men and women co-experience gendered harms.

  PublisherDOI

• Las comisiones de la verdad y los legados coloniales: lecciones desde Colombia (2018-2022)

  Antípoda Revista de Antropología y Arqueología · 2024-10-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  With its signing of the Havana Peace Agreement in 2016, Colombia sought to end an armed conflict that had lasted more than sixty years and had left nearly nine million victims. The agreement led to the establishment of a transitional justice (TJ) framework, including the Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence, and Non-Repetition (CEV). This study identifies how the CEV incorporated the legacies of colonialism into its analytical framework. The research is based on in-depth interviews with twenty scholars specializing in colonialism and/or TJ, nineteen peacebuilders, informal conversations with CEV members, and a review of various volumes of the final report. The findings highlight that the commission adopted a long-term historical perspective, revisiting aspects of Spanish colonialism (including structural racism and the hacienda system as an institution of territorial, political, and economic order) as explanatory factors for the various forms of violence experienced during the armed conflict. Additionally, several volumes of the final report emphasize the ongoing impact of colonial legacies, viewing them more as continuities or “ruins,” using Stoler’s concept (2008). While the possibility of dismantling colonial legacies on a material level due to the CEV’s work is debated, its symbolic significance must be highlighted, especially in a context where the State had sought to erase the colonial past. This article contributes to the emerging literature that examines TJ from a decolonial perspective, providing an empirical analysis of the CEV in Colombia, which we believe can become a key reference for this field.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• On international law and Gaza: critical reflections

  London Review of International Law · 2024-07-01 · 16 citations

  articleOpen access

  As Israel’s assault on Gaza continues into its tenth month, the language of legality has become the dominant frame of popular and political discourse. Public interest in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and its proceedings is at a level perhaps never seen before; so too in the International Criminal Court (ICC), its Prosecutor at once urged to act and condemned for inaction, his recent request to judges for the issuing of arrest warrants both celebrated and damned. International law has emerged as the global vernacular of both condemnation and legitimation; few commentators today speak of Gaza or Palestine without invoking the language of il/legality. What are we to make of this groundswell of interest in and resort to international law? What is the significance of the current series of ICJ proceedings and popular engagements with them? How should we think about the clamorous championing of The Hague and its institutions as the harbingers of justice? The editors of the London Review of International Law invited our advisory editors and others in the academic community of critical scholars to reflect on these questions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How Feminist Is International Law

  Proceedings of the ASIL Annual Meeting · 2024-01-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Reflections From Lviv: Stand Tall for the Rule of Law Summit

  Proceedings of the ASIL Annual Meeting · 2024-01-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• The Datafication of Counterterrorism

  2023-12-14

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Counterterrorism practices, institutions, and discourses have expanded over the past 20 years. This enlargement has come with extraordinary costs for international law’s integrity and traction especially revealed in the pushback against the classification and regulation of non-international armed conflicts under a laws of war framework. There are particularly adverse consequences for the integrity of human rights and humanitarian law norms because the institutional and political interests represented by counterterrorism seek to displace these norms and reclaim complex conflict and fragile space as primarily subject to exceptional and nationally defined counterterrorism legal regimes. Little systematic attention has been paid to the patterns of harm and impunity defining the post 9/11 counterterrorism landscape grounded in the widespread use of such technologies. New technology deployment in counterterrorism opens new vistas of harm, consolidates existing patterns of concern, and pervasively operates in legal gray zones. Metadata collection is spawning the datafication of counterterrorism, and the central role technology plays in consolidating its practices and institutions. In the counterterrorism realm, the lack of normative constraint on privacy and data protection functions as a positive incentive for States to invoke this legal framework when addressing security or conflict challenges instead of armed conflict or human rights derogations / limitations frames. This in turn strengthens and consolidates the counterterrorism architecture through ongoing iteration and validation.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Dina Francesca Haynes

  26 shared

• Naomi Cahn

  25 shared

• Oren Gross

  University of Minnesota

  22 shared

• Colm Campbell

  6 shared

• Lina Malagón

  University of Wales Trinity Saint David

  5 shared

• Cecilia M. Bailliet

  5 shared

• Bill Rolston

  5 shared

• Rory O’Connell

  University of Ulster

  5 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Law

  Fionnuala Ni Aolain

  1997

Awards & honors

• Humphrey School of Public Affairs End-of-Year Awards
• Hubert H. Humphrey Public Leadership Awards
• Humphrey-Johnson Book Prize