Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology is the youngest and at the same time fastest-growing law school in Ireland. More than 40 full-time academic members of staff engage in diverse areas of research with a strong international focus employing a diverse range of methodologies. Apart from the classical doctrinal method, staff members’ work is inter alia based on socio-legal, critical, feminist, and law-in-context approaches.

Members of staff have attracted considerable research funding – most notably two recent ERC grants, Horizon 2020 and Irish Research Council funding – and have been the recipients of prestigious research prizes.

Most recently, the School established four specialist research centres, among them a Centre for European Law. Members of the centre work on a broad range of research themes in the broad field of European Law, notably EU constitutional law; European courts; EU fundamental rights law; the law of the ECHR; EU health law; EU disability law; EU and ECHR labour law; EU environmental law; climate justice; EU consumer law; EU migration and refugee law; EU data protection law.

Staff members are working across and beyond the university to engage with the widest possible audience. The School is committed to developing policy-orientated research, which entails cultivating a range of links with civil society groups, business, public administration, and legal professions. By actively engaging with non-academic audiences through the production of commissioned research, policy papers, evidence and other collaborations with legislatures, human rights bodies, government agencies, and the like, researchers ensure that their findings have a real-life impact.

The School’s international and European focus is also reflected in its teaching offer with numerous specialist European and international law modules on offer to undergraduate and postgraduate students. The School currently hosts a Jean Monnet Chair in EU Law and Fundamental Rights, which provides teaching activities across all year groups.

The School’s teaching is research-led aiming to provide students with new perspectives on legal research, challenging them to rethink the role of the law and of the legal professional in society. The School runs double degree programmes in collaboration with the Université Catholique de Lyon and boasts a large and expanding network of international partnerships with other law schools regularly hosting guest lecturers from all over the world.