The Oxford University’s Master’s Programme in International Human Rights Law is offered jointly by the Department for Continuing Education and the Faculty of Law. It is conducted on a part-time basis over 22 months and includes two periods of distance learning via the internet as well as two summer sessions held at New College, Oxford.

The degree programme is designed in particular for lawyers and other human rights advocates who wish to pursue advanced studies in international human rights law but may need to do so alongside work responsibilities. A central objective of the course is to ensure that our students not only know but can also use human rights law. The curriculum places roughly equal emphasis on the substance of human rights law, its implementation and research.

The students so far have come from 82 countries. The faculty is also diverse and includes internationally recognised human rights scholars and advocates.

For historical reasons, Oxford University does not offer an LLM degree. The standard one-year post-graduate degree at Oxford in the social sciences, including Law, is the Master of Studies (MSt). The MSt is roughly equivalent to an LLM but involves somewhat more assessed work than most LLM programmes in International Human Rights Law.

Admissions will re-open on 1 September 2016 for the course starting September 2017.  If you would like to be informed when information and application materials are available for the next admissions round, please email iphumrts@conted.ox.ac.uk inserting ‘IHRL MST mailing list’ in the subject line.

We hope you will find this website and the degree programme of interest.

Dr Andrew Shacknove
Director of International Human Rights Law Programmes and Associate Professor of Law University of Oxford.