Staff profile

Dara is a full-time PhD candidate at Durham Law School. She gained her first-class hons LLB from Liverpool John Moores University where she returned during the Covid-19 Pandemic to teach online seminars. After her undergraduate degree in Liverpool Dara joined Durham law school’s LLM program in International Law and Governance for which she obtained a distinction for her efforts. She has taught undergraduate level EU Constitutional Law at Durham University and is also a law tutor with the Durham University International Study Centre teaching on the International Foundations Year and International Pre-Masters Programme. During her time in education Dara has been active member in various societies and continues to be involved in extra-circular responsivities. As a student ambassador for the UK’s animal law charity A-Law, Dara and her colleagues have organised an animal law debate and a student led conference on the human relationship with nonhuman animals. Dara has attended the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law lecturer workshop where she developed materials that have since been delivered on her course at the DUISC on Contemporary Issues in the Law. She has also been a global advisor for the think tank Mazeltov – Innovation and Justice where she was the chair of their mentorship programme. Dara’s key research interests include international law, international human rights law, law and culture, and animal law.

Thesis Synopsis

Dara’s thesis seeks to reconsider the international legal approach to ‘harmful’ cultural practices. She explores how protecting individuals from harm and respecting cultural divergences can be at odds with one another where a cultural practice causes a type of harm.

Dara focuses on three specific case studies where this takes place:

• Female Genital Cutting, a cultural practice which alters the genitals of females, often as a coming-of-age celebration.
• Male Circumcision, where male genitalia is altered, often for religious ritualistic reasons and,
• Whaling, where whales are hunted as part of a cultural practice.

Through the exploration and comparison of these case studies, the analysis of harm, and of western representation in international human rights law (IHRL) Dara will aim to propose a new approach to clashes between IHRL and culture. She hopes to inspire human rights practitioners and lawmakers to better balance the respect for culture and the mitigation of harm in IHRL.