Aoife Nolan (LL.B, PhD) is Director of Postgraduate Programmes in Human Rights at the School of Law, Queen's University Belfast. She has previously worked as Senior Legal Officer with the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Litigation Programme at the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, where she conducted research and litigation on economic and social rights. She was also Coordinating Editor of the Housing & ESC Rights Law Quarterly. In addition to other activities, she has served as a Council of Europe Expert on economic and social rights. She a member of the Coordinating Committee of the ESCR-Net Case-Law Database. She is currently co-manager of a major two-year research project on ‘Budget Analysis and the Advancement of Social and Economic Rights in Northern Ireland’ based at QUB, which is being funded by Atlantic Philanthropies. In 2006-7, she served as Human Rights Adviser to the Working Group on Economic and Social Rights, including Relevant Equality Issues of the Northern Ireland Bill of Rights Forum. In early 2008, she provided legal advice to members of the International NGO Coalition for an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.  She is currently working on a monograph on children's socio-economic rights, democracy and the courts, which will be published by Hart Publishing in 2009.