Dr Noel McGuirk
Overview
Dr Noel McGuirk is a Lecturer in Law at Ulster University Law School. His research spans legal education, security studies, and constitutional law, and he is currently working on a project examining the legacy of Brexit for Northern Ireland’s constitutional status.
In security studies, his work examines the use of profiling as a counterterrorism tool, especially in crowded places (soft targets), and the balance between security and civil liberties. His first monograph, Terrorist Profiling and Law Enforcement, develops an original methodology for assessing the value of profiling in the prevention, detection, and deterrence of terrorism. Separately, he has published an article that sets out a distinct ‘Framework to Measure/Assess the Utility of Profiling as Counterterrorism Tool’. He has also recently co-edited (with Dan-Jan Jasinski Northampton) Citizens, the State and Justice which brings together academics, practising lawyers, and judges to offer a multidisciplinary insight into the relationship between the state and citizens through the lens of securing justice; Noel contributes two chapters, including one on the design of emergency powers and a further chapter on state responses to dissent in times of crisis. He is also a co-author of a prominent Public Law textbook offering an accessible introduction to UK constitutional law.
In legal education, Noel focuses on curriculum design that integrates skills development and student wellbeing so graduates are professionally prepared and adaptable. He is particularly interested in embedding practical legal skills across programmes to strengthen career readiness and personal growth. He has written widely on legal education, including a co-authored chapter in How to Offer Effective Wellbeing Support to Law Students (on scaffolding support pathways), Embedding compassion into law curricula: the role of compassion pedagogy and Sculpting the Provision of Student Support for Law Students to Enhance Inclusivity: Complications and Challenges. He also co-authored Early Career Legal Academia: An Interactive Guidecontributing Enhancing Legal Education Through Small Project Working and Co-Creation and co-authored a National Teaching Fellows blog piece, Making space for life skills in learning encouraging programme leads to create space for skills that help students thrive.
Noel welcomes enquiries from intending PhD students in the fields of constitutional and human rights law, as well as security and terrorism studies.
Noel joined Ulster University Law School in December 2024, and prior to this, he was a lecturer in law at Lancaster University Law School. Previously, Noel worked as a Judicial Assistant in the Court of Appeal and a lecturer in law at BPP University Law School, London. He also serves as an external examiner on law programmes at Edge Hill University.
Noel graduated with a first-class LL.B. (Hons) in Law with Business Studies at Ulster University. He also holds an LLM in Human Rights and Criminal Justice (QUB), an M.Res. in Law and Society (Reading), and a PhD in Law from the University of Birmingham. Noel is finalising his M.Ed. in Learning and Teaching at the Open University. Noel is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE, and a member of the Socio-Legal Studies Association and the Society of Legal Scholars; he previously served on the Executive Committee of the Association of Law Teachers.
