
University Associate Professor; Fellow (Clare College); Director of Studies; Director of the Centre for Public Law (CPL)
Research centres and interest groups
CV / Biography
Kirsty Hughes is an Associate Professor specialising in Human Rights Law. She is joint General Editor of the European Human Rights Law Review, Director of the Centre for Public Law, University of Cambridge, a member of Blackstone Chambers Academic Panel and Deputy Editor of Public Law. She is a co-convenor of the European Human Rights Law Conference.
Her research interests are in the fields of UK and European human rights law, and she is particularly interested in the right to privacy, the human rights of migrants, modern slavery and human trafficking and the law of protest. Her co-authored book on Human Rights Law in the UK will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2025. She is also a co-editor on a major collaborative project on Race and European Human Rights Law., which will be published by Hart Publishing.
Her research has been published in leading journals including the Modern Law Review, Law Quarterly Review and the Cambridge Law Journal. Her article in the Modern Law Review was awarded the Wedderburn Prize (in honour of Lord Wedderburn of Charlton) and was cited by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2021. Her article in the Law Quarterly Review was cited by the Court of Appeal in England and Wales, and her submissions to the Joint Select Committee on Privacy and Injunctions (co-authored with Lord Grabiner KC) were relied upon in the Joint Committee's Report Privacy and Injunctions (March 2012). Her submissions to the Joint Committee on Human Rights on EU nationals' residency post-Brexit were cited in their final report (December 2016) and she was invited to give oral evidence to the House of Lords EU Justice Sub-Committee inquiry 'Brexit: Citizens' Rights'. She has also contributed to national and international media coverage on legal issues, including the BBC, The New York Times and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. She has been the recipient of a number of research fellowships including a CRASSH research fellowship at the University of Cambridge to work on a project concerning the right to protest, a visiting research fellowship at UNSW, a Cambridge Humanities Research Grant which funded her research at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, a Jean Monnet Fellowship at EUI (Firenze), and visiting research fellowships at Harvard and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She has also been consulted by the Australian Law Reform Commission on several projects and has lectured at universities in Gdansk, Torun, Wroclaw Lublin and Warsaw (Poland), Prague (Czech Republic), Bratislava (Slovakia) and Budapest (Hungary).
At Cambridge she lectures human rights law, animal rights law and advanced public law, as well as supervising graduate dissertations and theses. In respect of the latter she was shortlisted for the postgraduate research supervisor of the year award at the 2023 Student-Led Teaching Awards, Cambridge. She welcomes applications from potential PhD students interested in pursuing projects within her areas of expertise.
Selected publications
Books
Human Rights Law in the UK (with Stevie Martin, Stephanie Palmer), 2025)
Common Law Constitutional Rights (with Mark Elliott), 2020)

Articles
"The Public Figure Doctrine and the Right to Privacy" (2019) Cambridge Law Journal 70.
"Mass Surveillance and the European Court of Human Rights" (2018) European Human Rights Law Review 589.
"If Big Brother is Watching You? Who is Watching Big Brother?" (2018) This Century's Review
"Brexit and the Right to Remain of EU Nationals" (2017) Public Law 94.
"Publising Photographs Without Consent" (2014) Journal of Media Law 180
"A Behavioural Understanding of Privacy and its Implications for Privacy Law" (2012) 75(5) Modern Law Review 806.
"Parliament Reports on Privacy and Injunctions" (2012) 4(1) Journal of Media Law 17.
"The Use, Abuse and Implications of the Draft Judgment Procedure" (2011) 127(4) Law Quarterly Review 565.
"Privacy Injunctions - No Obligation to Notify Pre-Publication" (2011) 3(2) Journal of Media Law 179.
"Post-adoption Photographs: Welfare, Rights and Judicial Reasoning (with Brian Sloan)" (2011) Child & Family Law Quarterly 393.
"Balancing Rights and the Margin of Appreciation: Article 10, breach of confidence and success fees" (2011) 3(1) Journal of Media Law 29.
"No Reasonable Expectation of Anonymity?" (2010) 2(2) Journal of Media Law 169.
"Photographs in Public Places and Privacy" (2009) 1(2) Journal of Media Law 159.
Book Chapters
"A Dynamic Conception of the Ambit of the Right to Private Life and an Evolving Role for the European Court of Human Rights " in Peter Coe and Paul Wragg (ed(s)), Landmark Cases in Privacy Law, 2022)
