Laoise de Brún
Barrister, documentary-maker and women's rights campaigner
Laoise de Brún brings a rare combination to Irish women's rights advocacy: the storytelling instinct of a seasoned BBC and Channel 4 documentary-maker, the forensic discipline of a barrister, and the organising drive behind The Countess, the group she founded to defend sex-based rights in Ireland. Her work sits at the intersection of law, media and grassroots activism.
Laoise de Brún is the founder of The Countess, an Irish advocacy organisation named in honour of Countess Markievicz — the revolutionary who fought for Irish independence and women's emancipation — whose legacy, de Brún argues, demands more than symbolic commemoration. Before founding The Countess, she built a career as a documentary-maker for BBC and Channel 4, developing the ability to investigate complex social questions and communicate them to broad public audiences, skills she has since redirected into legal training and political campaigning as a barrister.
She joined Stella O'Malley for the episode The Countess Didn't Fight For This: Ireland and the Battle for Women's Rights (January 2026) to take stock of five years of women's rights campaigning in Ireland. Their conversation ranged across hard-won campaigns, the particular pressures facing Irish advocates in a small and closely networked political culture, and the recent legislative momentum to decouple prison placement from gender recognition certificates — a reform with direct implications for the safety of women held in custody. De Brún speaks with the precision of a barrister and the accessibility of a broadcaster, making her one of the clearest voices available to Irish listeners trying to follow a fast-moving legal and political landscape.
For Irish audiences, de Brún's significance lies in the domestic grind: the lobbying, coalition-building, Oireachtas submissions and public communications work that organisations like The Countess have sustained over years, operating within a constitutional framework and a political culture distinct from Britain's. Ireland moved rapidly on gender self-identification, and it is now navigating, through legislation and public debate, what that means for sex-based rights.
Her presence on Beyond Gender signals a broader moment in which Irish advocates are reaching international platforms — and in which Stella O'Malley's Irish perspective gives the show a particular purchase on questions that matter acutely at home.
