Prof. Aoife Daly teaches and researches in the area of human rights law, specialising in children's environmental rights, climate action, and access to justice. She is at present researching children/youth and how their environmental action is impacting human rights law.

She secured a €2m European Research Council Consolidator Grant for her project Youth Climate Justice (2023-2028), to carry out a large scale research study on child/youth climate justice - inside and outside the courts - around the world. The project involves an interdisciplinary team working with children, youth and others to analyse their experiences of youth climate action in climate cases, at COP, and in their communities. 

In 2026 she worked on the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression's 'Joint declaration on the right to freedom of expression of children online'.

Aoife has extensive experience working directly with children/youth on their rights, particularly through art and drama. Her books include 'Children, Autonomy and the Courts: Beyond the Right to be Heard' (Brill/Nijhoff, 2018) and 'The Rights of Children and Youth in the Climate Crisis: Action and Litigation'  (Routledge, 2026) with Paz Landeira and Muller.

Aoife's primary research relates to human rights based approaches and particularly children's rights. She specialises in children's rights, particularly in relation to their activism and litigation on the right to a healthy environment. She has produced a large body of work in this area, including work examining child-friendly climate justice; theorising how young climate action constitutes a 'postpaternalist' time for children's rights; examining how children's environmental rights are intergenerational rights; highlighting the equality implications of the climate crisis; and arguing that children have particular 'climate competence' which makes them powerful actors in this space. Aoife's research interests include law and human rights from interdisciplinary perspectives. Her research on children's environmental rights is part of a ground breaking body of work on children's autonomy in international human rights law. This work includes research on children's 'competence' and the legal grey areas around childhood and adulthood. She has also written extensively on human rights based approaches to issues such as kinship care and sex/relationships education.

Human rights law; climate change; environmental rights; European Convention on Human Rights; family law; children's rights.