Laura Lundy is Professor of Law at University College Cork and Professor Emerita of Children's Rights at Queen’s University, Belfast. She was Joint Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Children’s Rights and a qualified barrister at law.  

Professor Lundy's expertise is threefold. 

1. Children’s right to participate in decision-making  Her 2007 paper, “’Voice is not enough” is the most highly cited articles ever on children’s rights and the model of children’s participation it proposes (based on four key concepts - Space, Voice, Audience and Influence) is used extensively in scholarship and practice. The ‘Lundy model’ of child participation is core to the Irish National Children’s Participation Strategy (2015) and National Framework on Child and Youth Participation and has been adopted by international organisations such as the European Commission and World Health Organisation and global NGOs such as World Vision. and UNICEF.

2. The Right to Education: she has written extensively on domestic education law and the international human right to education and human rights education.

3. The implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in law and policy.  She was the principal investigator in a 2012 study for UNICEF UK which examined incorporation of the UNCRC in law in 12 countries. This study won a Best of UNICEF research award in 2014 and was chosen as one of its most impactful research projects ever in 2019. In 2021, this was followed by an edited collection on Incorporating the UNCRC in National Law.

Drawing on the Lundy Model of Participation, the Centre for Children’s Rights has pioneered an innovative methodology for conducting rights-based participatory research with children and Professor Lundy has extensive practical experience of applying this with children of all ages in diverse social and geographical contexts.  

She provided advice and/or training on children’s rights to a wide range of other international organisations including the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, OSCE, OECD, the Council of Europe, European Commission, UNICEF, Child Rights Connect, Terre des Hommes and Save the Children.  She has also provided expert advice and training on children’s rights and participation to government departments and public bodies in the UK and Ireland and across the world, including Taiwan (where she was a member of its international expert panel reviewing its progress on children’s rights), Andorra, Denmark, Malta, New Zealand, Iceland and Turkmenistan.

Professor Lundy has a particular interest in facilitating public understanding of the human rights of children through the co-production of user-friendly versions of legal texts.  She developed a set of videos explaining the UNCRC to professionals (that have also been integrated into core training for UNICEF staff worldwide). She has also pioneered  the development of child-friendly versions of international human rights documents with children as co-authors, including:  a child-friendly version of the Council of Europe’s Lanzarote Convention on child abuse and exploitation; a child-friendly version of the EU Recommendation on Investing in children for Eurochild; a child-friendly version of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment No. 19 on public budgeting;  the first child-friendly version of a report of a UN Special Rapporteur on children’s rights and the environment. ;and a series of child-friendly versions of the 2021 EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child. She has written guidance on this process for the European Commission and the How to Child Rights series.