Rachel Murray is Professor of International Human Rights Law and Director of the Human Rights Implementation Centre at the University of Bristol. Her specialist areas are human rights in Africa, particularly the African Charter and its Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights and the Organization of African Unity/African Union. She has written widely in this area, including books with Hart Publishing and Cambridge University Press (Human Rights in Africa, from Organization of African Unity to African Union, Cambridge, 2004; The African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights: The System at Work, with Malcolm Evans, Cambridge, 2008; The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights and International Law, Hart Publishing, 2000), and articles in leading legal human rights journals. She also advises organisations and individuals on how to use the African human rights system, including drafting cases and participating in its meetings. 

She is on the editorial board of a number of journals including the Journal of African Law and African Journal of International and Comparative Law. 

Her other area of interest is national human rights institutions (The Role of National Human Rights Institutions at the International and Regional Levels, Hart Publishing, 2007). She holds and directs two major grants with the AHRC. The first is to evaluate the role of national preventive mechanisms under the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture. The second examines the implementation of human rights standards and the role of soft law.

She is a Fellow of the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex.