Katie Pentney

Katie is a DPhil Candidate in Law at Wolfson College and a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow. Supervised by Professor Martin Scheinin, her doctoral research focuses on government disinformation and freedom of expression, and on the capacity of traditional rights frameworks to respond to modern challenges.

Prior to her doctoral studies, Katie obtained an Advanced LL.M. in European and International Human Rights Law (summa cum laude) from Leiden University. Her LL.M. thesis, which analysed five forms of governmental interference with freedom of expression, was awarded the Max van der Stoel Human Rights Award 2021. 

Katie has a J.D. from Osgoode Hall Law School (Toronto, Canada) and a Bachelor of Arts (Highest Honours) from Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada). She has worked for a number of years at the intersection of law and policy on issues ranging from access to information to sexual and gender based violence, from climate change to hate speech. Most recently, Katie worked with Global Legal Action Network on a climate change case brought by Portuguese children and young people against 33 Respondent States before the European Court of Human Rights.

She was a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism (McGill Faculty of Law, Canada) from 2023-2025 and a Graduate Research Student in Residency at the Bonavero Institute for Human Rights in 2022. Katie convened the Bonavero Graduate Research Forum and was an Associate Editor on the Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal for several years. She previously worked as an RA, preparing freedom of expression training materials for use in higher education on a project with Dr Bettina Lange.