Professor Katie Boyle

Personal statement

Katie Boyle is Professor of Human Rights Law and Social Justice at the University of Strathclyde and previously qualified as a constitutional lawyer with the Government Legal Service for Scotland. Her research examines the legalisation of human rights, specifically economic, social and cultural rights (ESC rights) in different constitutional settings. This work has informed processes of constitutional change across the UK and internationally. At the international level her research includes work funded by the British Academy in Colombia and Brazil and her work was translated into Spanish to inform the Chilean constitutional convention process that sought to address the legacy of the Pinochet regime. In 2023 the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights invited her to contribute to the Hernán Santa Cruz Dialogues on the 75^th anniversary of the UDHR.

Her books on “Economic and Social Rights Law” (2020) and “Access to Social Justice” (2024 co-authored) address the UK’s international human rights accountability gap with recommendations for reform, including effective structural remedies to address systemic and clustered injustice.

Previous appointments include the First Minister’s Advisory Group on Human Rights Leadership, the Academic Advisory Panel to the National Taskforce on Human Rights Leadership, the Children and Young Person’s Commissioner’s Expert Group on incorporation of the UNCRC and advising the Scottish Government’s Human Rights Bill Team on access to justice for ESC rights.

ESC rights relate to issues such as housing, health care, education, employment, and social security. Violations of the rights tend to impact groups that experience structural intersectional injustice, including women, children, ethnic minorities, the disabled and the elderly among other minority groups. Professor Boyle’s research uses emancipatory interdisciplinary and participatory methods to ask how rights can be made legally enforceable, in particular through formal legalisation, incorporation (embedding international law domestically) and enabling accountability in accessing justice from the margins.