Noreen O'Meara

Noreen O'Meara joined UCC as the Synnott Family Chair in European Union Law in May 2025. With research interests that cross-cut EU, human rights, climate and environmental law, she has particular expertise on connections between human rights and the environment, environmental governance and pollution, and relationships between the EU and ECHR.

Experienced at leading and supporting interdisciplinary, funded research projects (UKRI/GCRF, ESRC/IAA, EPSRC, GIZ, UNEP, British Academy), current projects focus on plastics pollution, urban sustainability and trade. Noreen holds a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship advancing her research on national, EU and international dimensions of environmental governance. She read Law at the University of Cambridge (Corpus Christi College) and UCL (LLM (Public Law) and completed her PhD research in European Law at Queen Mary, University of London. She has also completed non-degree studies at the European University Institute (EUI), Florence, Université Paris-1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne) and RADA.

Noreen previously worked as a research fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) and in practice at the European Commission's Legal Service and the Court of Justice of the European Union (cabinet, Advocate General Sharpston). Her work focused on infringement actions against Member States and cases in a broad range of areas of EU law, including data protection, taxation, extradition and environmental law. Until April 2025, Noreen worked at Surrey Law School, University of Surrey, UK, most recently as Reader (Associate Professor) in Human Rights, European and Environmental Law. 

Noreen is the director of the LLM (Taught) postgraduate degree programme at UCC. 

Modules in the 2025-26 academic year:

• LW2100: Constitutional and Institutional Law of the EU
• LW6567: Introduction to European Union Law
• LW6618: Climate Change Law and Policy