Martha Spurrier (born 1986) is a British barrister and human rights campaigner. She was the director of the advocacy group Liberty from 2016 to 2024.
Early life Spurrier was educated at Godolphin and Latymer School in London, and then at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where she graduated with a BA (Hons) in history. She took a law conversion course at City University London, and then the bar professional training course at BPP University.
Career Before joining Liberty, Spurrier worked as a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, of which she remains an associate tenant. She is the author of Freedom to Write: A User's Guide (published by English PEN in 2012), a contributing editor to the Rights and Freedoms volume in Halsbury’s Laws of England (2013 and 2018), and co-authored the second edition of Disabled Children: A Legal Handbook (published by the Legal Action Group in 2016).
In 2015, she was one of the three joint founders of the "Act for the Act" campaign (with Caoilfhionn Gallagher and Fiona Bawdon), a crowdfunded advertising campaign to tell positive stories about the Human Rights Act 1998.
She took up her post at Liberty at the end of May 2016, taking over from Shami Chakrabarti. She was replaced as director by Akiko Hart in January 2024.
In July 2018, Spurrier was awarded the "Hero Award" at the 20th Annual ISPA Awards by the ISPA Council for challenging the Investigatory Powers Act in the High Court.
In 2024, Spurrier was appointed as an independent expert advisor to the McCullough Review, which examined allegations that the Police Service of Northern Ireland unlawfully spied on journalists.
Personal life She is married to fellow barrister Jesse Nicholls.
References
Footnotes
External links Martha Spurrier on Liberty's official website Martha Spurrier at The Guardian "'Human Rights and Access to Justice in a Post-Brexit World': Martha Spurrier (Liberty)", Cambridge Pro Bono Project, 15 November 2017. "Q&A with Liberty's Martha Spurrier", Luminate, 21 April 2022.