Global Vision
Our School fosters a supportive, welcoming, diverse and inclusive environment for all our students and staff. Over the years, we have welcomed international students and staff from diverse cultural backgrounds, which has fostered opportunities to engage with, and enrich our understanding of, a multiplicity of cultures and intellectual traditions. We seek to support our students to become inclusive citizens and future thinkers who can understand and contribute towards current and future local and global challenges.
We embed sustainable development goals (SDGs) in all our teaching, research and community engagement; in particular we work on:
- SDG 1: No Poverty.
- SDG 5: Gender Equality
- SDG 8 : Decent Work and Economic Growth
- SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities
- SDG 16: Peace Justice and Strong Institutions.
Work in these areas and others is pioneered by our centres of excellence: the Law Clinic, Legal Innovation Centre, Social Justice Institute and the Transitional Justice Institute.
International Students
We have welcomed students from many different countries including Canada, Colombia, Egypt, India, Liberia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Syria, Turkey, Uganda, the USA and others.
Check our page for international students for more details on why Ulster Law School is a wonderful choice for international students.
Student Mobility
We support our students to travel abroad through Ulster University’s Study Abroad scheme. There are many opportunities for such study, including: Turing (which has replaced Erasmus+ after Brexit); Study USA; ISEP; and certain ad hoc programmes through Ulster’s partner institutions. Details of these programmes are available on the university’s Go Global website.
We have regularly enabled cohorts of students to visit Pecs, Hungary for ongoing intensive study visits.
CUC Qatar
Ulster University’s City University Campus (CUC) in Qatar will be offering the LLM in International Commercial Law and Alternative Dispute Resolution from 2025.
International Research
We have numerous international links; our staff are actively involved in research projects across the globe, including Chile, Brazil, Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, Uganda, Zimbabwe and other areas. Our staff have worked with UN Special Rapporteurs and Council of Europe institutions in their missions.
Transitional Justice Institute (TJI) researchers are part of the LSE-led Gender, Justice and Security Hub which brings together researchers from dozens of projects across the globe.
Prof Wills has organised side events at the United Nations to publicise human rights violations. Prof Collins is a founder member of the Latin American Transitional Justice Network and has played a key role in processes involving the search for missing persons in Latin America. Dr Hansen is collaborating on a Danish Research Council funded project investigating the international standardisation of transitional justice across 4 cases (the UN, Uganda, Colombia and Syria).
Partnerships and Networks
We collaborate with international institutions and are developing international agreements with institutions in Canada and the US and elsewhere.
We are part of CLEO (Clinical Legal Education Organisation); Laura Hyde is the Law Clinic's representative on the steering committee of a collaboration with the ALCU (Association of Law Clinics of Ukraine).
We host the Human Trafficking Research Network (HTRN), a network open to academics and practitioners currently engaged in research or practice on the broad theme of human trafficking; members come from a range of different locations across the globe, including the UK, Nigeria, USA, Belgium, Spain, Australia, to name a few.
Visitors
Through the School and centres of excellence we welcome visitors regularly through the academic year; these visitors contribute to our learning environment and to our research culture. We welcome short-term visitors as well and regularly organise mini-symposia for international visitors from all parts of the globe, Canada to Malaysia.
Staff mobility
Staff regularly contribute to public events, conferences and academic training abroad for example Dr Iyer has lectured in several foreign universities, including Meiji University (Japan), University of Melbourne (Australia), Tsinghua University (China), University of Malaya (Malaysia) and Soochow University (Taiwan); Prof Gráinne McKeever at the University of Queensland and the Melbourne Law School.
Contacts
Prof Rory O’Connell is the Law School’s Director of Development and Partnership. Dr Venkat Iyer is the School’s Study Abroad Advisor and the Faculty South Asia Advisor. For general queries email law@ulster.ac.uk.
Keep in touch
We are on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – do keep in touch!
Venkat Iyer
For example, the Director of Educational Partnerships and International Affairs, Dr Venkat Iyer, has, for many years now, been sought as a consultant by governments around the world to provide advisory and drafting services in the area of media and broadcasting law.
He was, in 2004-5, invited by the World Bank to design a Continuing Legal Education Programme for lawyers in Kenya. More recently, Dr Iyer was appointed a Law Commissioner for Northern Ireland, in which capacity he provided services in the area of legal reform to the devolved administration in Northern Ireland. Dr Iyer has also been engaged in judicial training in various jurisdictions, and has been the editor of two prestigious journals, The Commonwealth Lawyer and The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, both published from London.
Thomas Hansen
Another member of staff, Dr Thomas Hansen, has been promoting links between Ulster and universities in Kenya. In 2017 Dr Hansen was awarded a grant by the Royal Irish Academy to act as principal investigator on a project involving peace-building and justice in that country.
He is currently working on another project relating to Kenya which aims to improve future justice processes relating to international crimes. Dr Hansen has also been involved, under a British Academy/Leverhulme grant, in investigating accountability for British war crimes in Iraq.
The School is constantly striving to increase its international engagement and aiming to, among other things, help Ulster achieve its mission of becoming one of the top 10 UK universities for international student experience. The process of internationalising the School’s teaching and research continues apace, as do its efforts to build strong partnerships around the world.