School of Law Visiting Professors

Aoife Nolan

Professor of International Human Rights Law and Co-Director of the Human Rights Law Centre, University of Nottingham

Aoife Nolan is Professor of International Human Rights Law and Co-Director of the Human Rights Law Centre at the University of Nottingham. Professor Nolan’s professional experience in human rights and constitutional law straddles the legal, policy, practitioner and academic fields. She is Vice-President of the Council of Europe's European Committee of Social Rights, which she joined in 2017. She has published extensively in the areas of human rights and constitutional law, particularly in relation to children's rights and economic and social rights. She currently leads a major three-year international research project on ‘Advancing Child Rights Strategic Litigation’.

Professor Nolan has acted as an expert advisor to a wide range of international and national organisations and bodies working on human rights issues, including numerous UN Special Procedures, UN treaty bodies, the Council of Europe, multiple NHRIs and NGOs. She has held visiting positions at academic institutions in Europe, Africa, the US and Australia. She is an Academic Expert member at Doughty Street Chambers where she co-leads the Children’s Rights Group.

Her recent work has focused on climate justice and the rights of children and future generations. In January 2021, she was invited to join the advisory board to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on its forthcoming General Comment No.26 on children’s rights and the environment with a special focus on climate change.

Paul Gillen

Partner, Lewis Silkin

Paul is a partner in Lewis Silkin’s Employment, Immigration and Reward division based in Belfast. He is qualified in England & Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and provides cross jurisdiction and comparative law advice to clients throughout the UK and Ireland.

He advises clients, across a wide range of sectors, on contentious and non-contentious matters, including HR support, mergers & acquisitions, restructuring, executive management, performance management, TUPE, outsourcing, discrimination law, and a full range of employment litigation, including complex discrimination cases. He regularly runs cases in the Employment Tribunals, both in GB and NI and has also been involved in Alternative Dispute Resolution in employment matters.

Before qualifying as a lawyer, Paul gained a B.Sc (Hons) in Psychology and a MA in HR Management and worked for over 10 years in people management roles in a range of sectors, including retail, construction and manufacturing. Paul is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development as well as Visiting Professor to the School of Law at Ulster University. This gives both professional specialist employment law skills along with the strength of "seeing it from the client's perspective" in advising on practical solutions. Paul is a regular employment law speaker for Legal Island, the CIPD, CBI and other organisations.

Sheena Grattan

Visiting Professor, School of Law

Sheena Grattan has almost 40 years’ experience of succession law, trusts, charity law and land law as an academic and a practising barrister, being called to both the Bar of Northern Ireland and to King’s Inns, Dublin.

During her years in academia, Sheena taught a wide range of commercial and property law subjects, with her main teaching interests being Equity, Succession Law and Taxation.  She was a council member of both the Irish Association of Law Teachers (also serving as Treasurer) and the Irish Legal History Society (also serving as Northern Secretary).  She was also a member of the Law Reform Advisory Committee for Northern Ireland, a member of the Council of Legal Education and the SLS (Servicing the Legal System) Committee.

At the Bar Sheena developed a speciality in wills, trusts and estates and charity law with associated tax. Throughout her years of full-time practice, Sheena retained an interest in both teaching and publishing.  She has over 80 publications ranging from articles in peer-reviewed international journals to user friendly guides aimed at lay audiences and including the main succession law and trusts law practitioner texts in Northern Ireland.

With other private client colleagues from the legal and accountancy professions, Sheena was a founding member of the Northern Ireland branch of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP) in 2007. She was responsible for the Branch’s acclaimed Education and CPD programme from 2008 until 2018 and served as Chair from 2018 – 2022.  She was instrumental in establishing a specific STEP Diploma programme for Northern Ireland, and delivered and examined the legal components since the inception of the programme in 2009 until 2025.  She is a recipient of the STEP Founder’s Award.

She was on the steering committee and Editorial Board of the Journal of Elder Law Capacity from 2016 to 2024 and is currently co-editor of the Northern Ireland Conveyancing and Land Law Journal.

Sheena is regularly invited to give lectures and CPD sessions to both branches of the legal profession, to the accountancy and tax professions, to the medical profession and to public bodies and to charities and other voluntary organisations. She was one of only two members of the Bar of Northern Ireland invited to join the Chancery Bar Association (England and Wales) as an overseas member.

Sean Moynihan

Visiting Professor

Sean P. Moynihan is the Founding Attorney and Principal of The Moynihan Group, LLC, a Boston based legal and business consulting firm. The firm provides corporate legal services, strategic business counsel, lobbying and relationship facilitation for companies, non-profits, trade associations and venture capital firms, as well as estate planning services, and Irish dual citizenship services for eligible applicants. The firm also specializes in the representation of Irish companies and organizations seeking to establish or expand operations in the United States including legal and compliance services as well as relationship facilitation within the business, government and academic arenas.

Attorney Moynihan graduated from Providence College and Suffolk University Law School. Before founding The Moynihan Group, he served as General Counsel to both the Ways and Means Committee and the Office of the Majority Leader of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. In those roles, he worked on a wide range of significant public policy issues in the Commonwealth, including energy and the environment, health care, life sciences and biotechnology, education, labor, and the administration of justice.

A Massachusetts native, Sean is a second-generation Irish American whose mother’s family is from Inagh, County Clare and father’s family is from Barraduff, County Kerry. He is a dual citizen of the United States and Ireland and is an active supporter of many Irish organizations including Irish Network Boston, of which he is prior President, the Irish American Partnership, Boston Irish Business Association, and the Boston Friends of the Gaelic Player’s Association. He currently serves as Vice President of Irish Network USA and is a member of Rian Center’s J-1 Advisory Panel. In 2019, he was recognized in Irish Central’s “Irish Legal 100” and in 2023 Attorney Moynihan was recognized in Irish America magazine’s Annual Business 100 honorees.

Martin O'Brien

Visiting Professor

Martin is a practising Barrister specialising in Human Rights, Employment and Discrimination law at the Bar of Northern Ireland. He has a Masters Degree in Human Rights & Emergency Law (QUB: 1992). Martin is a member of the Bar of Ireland (1998). From 1998 – 2009 he was a part-time Chairman of the Industrial Tribunal & The Fair Employment Tribunal. Since 2002, he has been a Chairman of the Appeals Tribunals and Disability Appeals Tribunal, Adjudicator of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Appeal Tribunal (since 2017), and is a Parole Commissioner.

Martin was a lecturer at the Institute of Professional Legal Studies at Queen's University Belfast from 1999 - 2018. Until January 2026, he was a part-time Chairman of the International Protection Appeal Tribunal of Ireland. Martin is a mediator, mediating in both jurisdictions of Ireland, and is a qualified International Arbitrator with the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, London.