Dr Margaret Fitzgerald-O’Reilly

Dr Margaret Fitzgerald-O’Reilly (BCL, LLM, PhD) is an Associate Professor in the School of Law at UL.

She has an LLM in Criminal Justice and was awarded a scholarship to undertake her PhD entitled The Usual Suspects: The Legal Marginalisation of Ex-Prisoners in Irish Society, which she graduated from in 2012. She is a Course Director and the Director of Marketing and Recruitment in the School of Law. Her research interests are primarily in the field of criminology, penology and criminal justice, in particular, issues pertaining to criminal records, criminal information sharing and disclosure issues, post-release management of offenders, sentencing and management of sex offenders, social and legal exclusion, techniques of punishment, sentencing, and crime control policies.

She is the author of Uses and Consequences of a Criminal Conviction: Going on the Record of an Offender (UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and co-author of Sexual Offending in Ireland: Laws, Procedures & Punishment, (Dublin: Clarus Press, 2018). She is currently working on a research monograph towards an International Criminal Records Database: Implications for Risk, Security and Human Rights (Forthcoming 2023: Palgrave Macmillan) and a socio-legal book on Human Rights Law in Modern Policing (Forthcoming 2023: Clarus Press).

She has published in national and international peer reviewed journals, presented at international conferences and is a member of the Centre for Crime Justice and Victim Studies.