Clare Ovey became the Director of Human Rights on 1 August 2024. Born in London, she studied Law at Cambridge University and qualified as a solicitor in England, working primarily in the field of criminal law. After three years working in the criminal law team of the Law Commission of England and Wales, an independent statutory law reform body, she joined the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights in 1995. She started working on the execution of the Court’s judgments in 2015 when she was seconded to the Secretariat of the Committee of Ministers, with primary responsibility for the Committee’s human rights (DH) meetings. In April 2018 she transferred to the Department for the Execution of the Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, where she became Head of Department in July 2020. She is the author of one of the leading English-language textbooks on the Convention system.