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Professor Alison Mawhinney is a public and human rights lawyer with a specialisation in the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and women's rights, in particular the right to health and gender justice. She is Director of the LLM Programme in International Criminal Law and International Human Rights Law.

Professor Mawhinney completed her undergraduate studies at Trinity College Dublin where she graduated with a BA (Hons) in Political Science. She earned a LLM in International Human Rights Law (Distinction) at the University of Essex and a PhD at Queen's University Belfast. From 2006-2010, she was a lecturer at the School of Law, Queen's University Belfast, where she served as Assistant Director of the Human Rights Centre. She joined ÑÇÖÞÉ«°É in 2011. From 2019 – 2021, she served as Head of the Law School.

Before joining academia, Professor Mawhinney worked for a variety of bodies in the field of human rights, including the European Court of Human Rights and the Directorate of Human Rights at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. She also worked for the Council of Europe in several of its Balkan field offices (Kosovo; Albania) where she was responsible for the development of human rights and rule of law activities including the development of the Kosovo Ombudsperson Institution, the Kosovo Law Centre, the Albanian Legal Compatibility Project, death penalty reform measures and human rights training for judges, prosecutors and lawyers.

Professor Mawhinney worked for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) on several projects in Bosnia-Herzegovina, including as adjudicator on the voting rights of returning refugees following the Dayton Peace Agreement (Visegrad, Republika Srpska; Zenica, Bosnia). She also worked for the UN in North Korea where she was in charge of the assessment and monitoring of aid to hospitals, schools and orphanges in different regions of the country (Hamhung; Sinuju) during the famine of 1997.

At home she has worked in the area of asylum and refugee law for the Irish Refugee Council in Dublin and the Red Cross Refugee Orientation Programme in Belfast, in both instances focussing on cases of unaccompanied women and minors, and applications for family reunification. 

Professor Mawhinney has acted as Principal Investigator on a number of AHRC funded projects including an AHRC inter-disciplinary research network, which examined the statutory duty to hold acts of collective worship in UK schools: Collective Worship & Religious Observance in Schools: An Evaluation of Law and Policy in the UK  http://collectiveschoolworship.com/index.html.  

Other research projects include an AHRC funded investigation into the effectiveness of opt-out provisions in protecting freedom of religion and belief standards in schools:  Opting out of religious education: the views of young people from minority belief backgrounds; and a SLS (Society of Legal Scholars) funded examination of the potential of the experience of Northern Ireland as a successful functioning jurisdiction to inform the future of legal organisation in Wales: 'Small legal jurisdictions in the UK: the legal and practical considerations.'

Professor Mawhinney has regularly presented her work before UN human rights bodies in Geneva, including to the UN Human Rights Committee regarding the protection of religious/belief liberty in the Irish school system. This resulted in a ground-breaking recommendation to Ireland to reform its education system.

In 2016, together with Carys Aaron, she presented a shadow report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, arguing that budget reductions by the UK Government to the Welsh-language public service broadcaster (S4C) failed to respect the language and cultural rights of Welsh children.

Professor Mawhinney has served as an adviser to the Council of Europe’s Group on Human Rights Monitoring in the Field and, in 2017, acted as an adviser to the European Commissioner on Human Rights’ Expert Group on Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights: https://www.coe.int/en/web/commissioner/women-s-sexual-and-reproductive-rights-in-europe.

Between 2015 - 2022, Professor Mawhinney was a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Public Policy Advisory Group (PPAG). She has served as an external examiner at the University of Manchester and the Cardiff School of Law and Politics. She regularly acts as a peer reviewer for books and journals including Legal Studies, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Education Law Journal, Journal of Law and Religion, Journal of Human Rights, Ashgates Publishers, Routledge, Manchester University Press, Palgrave, and as a grant reviewer for the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Email: a.mawhinney@bangor.ac.uk

Phone: +44 (0)1248 388204

Location: Room 408, Main Arts Building

Dr Mawhinney teaches at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and is Director of the LLM Programme in International Criminal Law and International Human Rights Law.

Current Undergraduate and Postgraduate Modules

SXL 3110: International Law & Contemporary Issues (module leader)

SXL 3113: Dissertation 

KAH 0004: Foundation Project

SXL 4042: International Human Rights Law (module leader)

SXL 4052: International Climate Change Law (module leader) 

SXL4009/4109: Legal Research Methods

SXL 4300: Dissertation 

Previous Undergraduate and Postgraduate Modules

SXL 1100/2201 Public Law (module leader)

SXL 2144/3144 International Human Rights Law (module leader)

SXL 2134/3134 Law, Religion and Belief (module leader)

SXL 1201/2201 Law, Justice and Procedure

SXL 4009 Legal Research Methods (module leader)

SXL 4043 European Human Rights Law (module leader)

SXL 4020 Law & Devolution in Wales and Europe 

SXL 4218 Administrative Law and Devolution

Teaching at previous institutions:

Family Law

Criminal Law

Skills and Employability 

Introduction to Law

Constitutional and Administrative Law 

Current Doctoral Supervision

Oluwatimilehin Bada

Tasha Roberts

Virgine Rouillard Le Court De Billot

Professor Mawhinney’s research explores the potential of law to bring about genuine social change and to fundamentally alter the way in which societal issues are perceived and acted upon. Her principal area of focus has been in the area of freedom of thought, conscience and religion, particularly as applied in education and in the workplace. Additionally, her work looks at issues of women’s health and explores the role of human rights law as a vehicle for highlighting injustice and discriminatory treatment and, critically, as a means to bring about change.

2025

• Accepted/In press
  Mawhinney, A., 12 May 2025, (Accepted/In press) In: Legal Studies.
  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

2022

• Published
  Mawhinney, A., 2022
  Research output: Other contribution

2021

• Published
  Mawhinney, A., 2021
  Research output: Book/Report › Commissioned report

2020

• Published
  Mawhinney, A., 2020
  Research output: Other contribution
• Published
  Mawhinney, A., 2020
  Research output: Other contribution

2019

• Published
  Mawhinney, A., Jul 2019.
  Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper
• Published
  Mawhinney, A., 2019
  Research output: Other contribution

2018

• Published