Professor Cathryn Costello appointed to Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission
In November 2025, Professor Cathryn Costello was appointed to the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. She is Full Professor of Global Refugee and Migration Law at the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin, where she is also Director of the PhD Programme.
Professor Costello was formerly Professor of Fundamental Rights and Co-Director of the Centre for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School (2020 – 2023). She was Andrew W Mellon Professor of International Refugee and Migration Law at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford (2013-2023). She remains a Visiting Professor at both the Hertie School and the University of Oxford.
She is a leading scholar of international and European refugee and migration law and also explores the relationship between migration and labour law in her work. Amongst her published work, she is the author of The Human Rights of Migrants and Refugees in European Law (OUP 2015) (co-winner of the Odysseus Prize 2016).
She was one of six new experts and activists appointed to the Commission, the others being Sam Blanckensee, Adam Harris, Rosaleen McDonagh, Patricia Munatsi-Mangwiza and Rose Wall.