Biography

Dr Shannonbrooke Murphy holds a BA Hons in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Toronto, an LLM in International Human Rights Law from the National University of Ireland Galway (now University of Galway), and a PhD from Middlesex University (UK). She relocated from Ireland to New Brunswick in 2019 to take up a position as Endowed Chair in Human Rights in the Human Rights Department at St Thomas University, where she has also served on the faculty trade union executive.

In Ireland she worked for more than a decade as a legislative, policy, and political advisor to elected representatives at all institutional levels on matters of equality and other human rights and their protection in domestic law, constitutional law, EU law, and under international treaty obligations including the Good Friday Agreement. In this brief she worked on a wide array of issues such as the human rights to healthcare and housing, police accountability and oversight mechanisms for human rights compliance, redress of historical systemic human rights violations related to colonization and religious institutions, as well as the equality rights of ethnic minorities, women’s rights, children’s rights, the rights of people with disabilities, LGBTI rights, workers’ rights, and the rights of economically marginalized individuals and groups. She continues to be consulted as a leading advocate for the entrenchment of a comprehensive Bill of Rights in a future constitution for a United Ireland.

Dr Murphy was appointed to the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission in 2023. She was appointed Director of the Atlantic Human Rights Centre in 2024. Her first book The Human Right to Resist in International and Constitutional Law is published by Cambridge University Press. The second edition of her co-edited volume with Professor William Schabas OC, The Research Handbook on International Courts and Tribunals, is forthcoming from Edward Elgar Publishers in 2024.