Katharina Ó Cathaoir researches health and human rights law. Originally from Ireland, she studied law at University College Cork and received an LL.M. in international law from Trinity College Dublin. Subsequently, Ó Cathaoir worked as a judicial researcher under the supervision of Mr. Justice Peter Charleton, followed by a stint as a legal advisor at the Permanent Mission of Ireland to the United Nations (New York).

Since 2014, Ó Cathaoir has lived and researched in Denmark, where she wrote her PhD on children’s rights in the context of obesogenic food marketing. Post-PhD, Ó Cathaoir has been a researcher in multiple interdisciplinary projects, examining, inter alia, the extent to which Danish law on genetics protects patients and vulnerable groups and patients’ rights in regard to the use of big data in health research. Furthermore, Ó Cathaoir was Principal Investigator of a project funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark on the measures taken to address the COVID-19 pandemic. She has published in, inter alia, the German Law Journal, European Journal of Health Law, Nordisk Socialrättslig Tidskrift,Juristen, and Health and Human Rights Journal.

She is co-author of Health and Human Rights: Global and European Perspectives and co-editor of a forthcoming volume on the European Health Data Space to be published with Routledge in 2025.

As a Pro Futura Scientia Fellow, Ó Cathaoir is conducting a five-year research project entitled “The Law on Health Data Outliers,” focused on legal issues pertaining to groups that may be left behind by the so-called big data revolution in healthcare, in particular women, children, older persons, and ethnic minority groups. Her research to date has examined the law pertaining to pregnant people and children, and legislation protecting patients from discrimination.

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2024-25.