Professor Conor Gearty

Conor Gearty was born in Ireland and graduated in law from University College Dublin before moving to Wolfson College, Cambridge in 1980 to study for a Master’s Degree and then for a PhD. He became a fellow of Emmanuel College Cambridge in 1983 and in 1990 he moved to the school of law at King’s College London where he was first a senior lecturer, then a reader and finally (from 1995) a professor. He was Director of LSE’s Centre for the Study of Human Rights (2002-2009) and has been Professor of human rights law at the Law School since 2002. In 2012 he became Director of LSE’s Institute of Public Affairs and in this capacity was responsible for a crowd-sourced UK Constitution, drafted in 2015 and available athttps://constitutionuk.com. He has published widely on terrorism, civil liberties and human rights. Conor is also a barrister and was a founder member of Matrix chambers from where he continues to practise. He has been a frequent adviser to judges, practitioners and public authorities on the implications of the UK Human Rights Act, and has lectured at home and abroad on the topic of human rights. He has appeared in human rights cases in the House of Lords, the Court of Appeal and the High Court. He has also been a visiting professor at Boston University, the University of Richmond, the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney, and is professor of Democracy in Paris 2 during the Academic Year 2023-24. Conor is a Fellow of the British Academy (where he is currently Vice-President for Social Sciences), a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, a Bencher of Middle Temple and has honorary doctorates from Sacred Heart University in the United States, University College Dublin in Ireland and Brunel and Roehampton universities in the UK. In 2021 he was appointed an honorary Queen’s Counsel (now King’s Counsel) in recognition of his services to law in England and Wales. His book about the European Convention on Human Rights in UK law On Fantasy Island. Britain, Europe and Human Rights was published by OUP in September 2016: see www.onfantasyisland.co.uk for video and written extracts from it. His next book, Homeland Insecurity. The Rise and Rise of Global Anti-Terrorism Law will be published by Polity in 2024.

Administrative support: Law.Reception@lse.ac.uk