Our People

Prof Nazila Ghanea

Fellow, Official Fellow

Professor in International Human Rights Law

Faculty of Law

PhD (Keele), MA (Dist), BA (First Class)

Nazila Ghanea is Professor of International Human Rights Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. She is an Official Fellow of Kellogg College and Senior Teaching Fellow at New College, Oxford. She has spent periods of research leave at the University of Oslo and as a Global Visitor at NYU, and has engaged with students around the world from Dushanbe to Graz, Eskisehir to San José, Sao Paulo to Hefei. She previously taught at the University of London, Keele University and in China. She co-directs the Oxford Masters in International Human Rights Law with Dr Shreya Atrey.

In July 2022 she was appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council to serve a six-year term as the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, an international role focused on the protection, promotion and advancement of this thematic right globally, advising states of their obligations and calling on non-state actors to uphold their responsibilities.

Her co-authored OUP monograph Freedom of Religion or Belief: An International Law Commentary was awarded the Alberigo Senior Book Award of €20,000,  and she was awarded the 2024 Notre Dame Prize for Religious Liberty with the $10,000 prize money transferred to Bauchi State University (Sa’adu Zungur) School of Law.

Teaching

Naz teaches human rights on the MSc in International Human Rights Law and occasionally on the Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL/MJur) at the Faculty of Law.

Research

Naz’s research is on freedom of religion or belief and how it relates to other human rights, minority rights, UN human rights norms and mechanisms, and the domestication of international human rights.

Selected publications

Freedom of Religion or Belief: An International Law Commentary, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016 (co-authored, new edition due out in 2027)

Of Hedgehogs and Representation: Chasing Religious Persecution in Law, & The Review of Faith & International Affairs 16.4, 2018

Big Promises, Small Gains: Domestic Effects of Human Rights Treaty Ratification in the Member States of the Gulf Cooperation Council (co-authored), Human Rights Quarterly 38.1, 2016

Religion or Belief, Discrimination and Equality: Britain in Global Contexts, London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013 (co-authored, output of an AHRC/ESRC grant)

Are Religious Minorities Really Minorities? Oxford Journal of Law and Religion 1.1, 2012

Minorities and Hatred: Protections and Implications, International Journal of Minority and Group Rights, 2010

Religion and Human Rights, London: Routledge, 2010 (4 volume collection)

Does God Believe in Human Rights? (co-edited), Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2007

Minorities, Peoples and Self-Determination  (co-edited), Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2005

Convergences and disparities between the human rights of religious minorities and of women in the Middle East, Human Rights Quarterly 26.3, August 2004