My work concentrates broadly on four areas: terrorism/security and the law, constitutional law, human rights law, and gender and the law. Inevitably these themes sometimes overlap; much of my work on human rights law for example has taken place or develops further the work that I have done in the security/counter-terrorism context. Fundamentally my work is concerned with whether and how ‘rights’ make a difference in complex policy areas, which is what bring my main topical interests (terrorism, transnational human rights adjudication, abortion law reform) together.

My work strives to consider law in context, and almost always adopts a comparative approach drawing insights from comparative constitutional law in particular, but also international law and international human rights law. In some of my work there is an empirical element; for example, the SECILE Project (on EU counter-terrorism) is heavily empirically informed having engaged in a structured manner with dozens of stakeholders.