It’s our great pleasure today to welcome Sarah M. Field as an IntLawGrrls contributor. Sarah has a blend of academic and applied experience as an international human rights lawyer. The academic rigour of her present and past action research and post doctoral projects is undergirded by more formative applied experience supporting domestic knowledge and practice/embodiment of international law through international legal advocacy projects, principally with the International Labour Office. In that capacity, she has investigated  the enjoyment of international human rights law and engaged to promote and support its fulfilment through rule of law (and organisational) transformational within varied jurisdictions of eastern and southern Africa, Asia and Pacific regions.

A key area of Sarah’s expertise is international law relating to substantive equality and non-discrimination; the international legal obligations to ensure rights on a substantively equal basis at work and more broadly formed a particular focus of some and crosscutting focus of other projects. The insights gleaned and questions raised from this diverse experience of international human rights law in practice sparked her doctoral research. It probes the extraordinary legal context of decision-making towards peace agreements from a child-rights perspective, inverting the challenges of assuring respect for children’s views ‘in’ and ‘through’ peace processes into possibilities for rights-based transformation. Sarah has an LLB from Trinity College Dublin and a PhD from University College Cork, Ireland. She is presently a National Project Coordinator of the cross-European GENOVATE Project at University College Cork, Ireland, and blogs occasionally at rights-streams.com.

Sarah’s first post will discuss Security Council resolutions on children affected by conflict. Heartfelt welcome!