Lisa Gormley is a Visiting Fellow with the Centre. She is an international lawyer specialising in equality for women and girls, and the obligation of States to eradicate violence against women and girls. Lisa is regularly consulted by, and works cooperatively with, lawyers representing women and girls, UN agencies, States, and national and international civil society organizations: she has also worked closely for several years with the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences. Lisa regularly speaks to academic and practitioner audiences about issues relating to the human rights of women and girls.
Lisa qualified as a solicitor in 1999 and was a legal adviser in Amnesty International's International Secretariat (2000-2014). During this time at Amnesty, Lisa provided legal advice to the Stop Violence against Women campaign. She took part in the negotiation of the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, known as the Istanbul Convention which has been described as "the gold standard" for addressing violence against women.
Lisa taught the module on women's human rights at the Human Rights Centre of the University of Essex in 2015 and 2016, designing and leading the course with Esther Major. Lisa wrote the on women's access to justice for gender-based violence, which was published on 8 March 2016.
Currently, Lisa is spending most of her time developing the Centre's , mainly by adding further detailed analysis of the international jurisprudence relating to violence against women, with support from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.