Daragh Murray
Daragh Murray is a Reader in International Law and Human Rights at Queen Mary University London School of Law, and a Fellow of the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences. He specialises in international human rights law and the law of armed conflict, with a particular interest in the use of artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies. He has been awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship to examine the impact of artificial intelligence on individual identity development and the functioning of democratic societies. This 7 year project runs until January 2029 with a current focus on (a) the use of AI in decision-making or decision-support contexts, including by law enforcement, intelligence agencies, the military and for social welfare provision, (b) on understanding the ‘chilling effects’ of surveillance, and (c) developing appropriate due diligence frameworks to inform pre-deployment decisions. Previous research examined the relationship between human rights law and the law of armed conflict and the regulation and engagement of non-State armed groups.
Daragh’s research has been covered by BBC Newsnight, BBC PM, PBS Newshour (US), The New York Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Financial Times, La Repubblica, Le Monde, BBC Radio 4 and other national news outlets across the world.
Daragh co-authored Facial Recognition Surveillance: Policing and human rights in the age of AI (OUP 2025) with Professor Pete Fusseyl; published in July 2025. He was also involved in the development of the UN Model Protocol for Law Enforcement Officials to Promote and Protect Human Rights in the Context of Peaceful Protests, and co-authored the annex to the Protocol on Human Rights Compliant Uses of Digital Technologies by Law Enforcement for the Facilitation of Peaceful Protests.
He publishes an AI & Human Rights newsletter each week.
Daragh is the author of ‘Human Rights Obligations of Non-State Armed Groups’ (Hart, 2016). He also authored the ‘Practitioners Guide to Human Rights Law in Armed Conflict’ in conjunction with Dapo Akande, Charles Garraway, Francoise Hampson, Noam Lubell and Elizabeth Wilmshurst. (OUP 2016) and is co-editor of ‘Digital Witness: Using Open Source Information for Human Rights Investigation, Documentation and Accountability (OUP 2020) with Alexa Koenig and Sam Dubberley. A second edition of Digital Witness is in preparation, and due for publication in 2026.
He has a PhD in Law from the University of Essex, an LLM in International Human Rights Law from the Irish Centre for Human Rights, an MSc in Computer Security & Forensics from Dublin City University, and a BA(mod) in Computer Science from Trinity College Dublin.