Kent Law School is delighted to welcome the arrival of a new Professor of Law – Professor Lydia Hayes, previously a Reader at Cardiff Law School.
Professor Hayes is a socio-legal scholar with research expertise in women and law, devolution, employment rights, care work, gender-based violence at work, and trade union freedoms. She is Principle Investigator for The Legal and Social Life of Care Standards Regulation in England, Scotland and Wales (Wellcome Trust) and is research network leader for Gender-based Violence and Labour Standards, partnered with North West University (South Africa), University of the Western Cape (South Africa), RMIT (Australia) and Unacceptable Forms of Work global research programme, partnered with RMIT (Australia).
Her current research focuses on the impact of devolution on employment rights and labour standards, particularly in Wales and Scotland. She is also developing empirical research projects to explore the impact in the workplace of minimum wage and equal pay claims made by women in low-waged work.
Earlier this year, Professor Hayes led a team examining the regulation of care work in the four nations of the UK. This was published for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Social Care and was a key resource for their analysis and recommendations. She worked as a legal advisor to Wales TUC in the development of proposals for a Social Partnership Act, an initiative adopted and announced in the National Assembly for Wales by First Minister Mark Drakeford in June 2019. This follows on from her report to Welsh Government in 2017 about exploitation in low-waged work in Wales, which informed Welsh policy on migration and Brexit.
Professor Hayes has written and spoken extensively about the need for sectoral collective bargaining to improve terms and conditions of work in UK social care. These recommendations have been echoed in political debates, in political manifesto commitments, trade union policies and cited in the House of Lords.Her new monograph One Hundred Years of Equal Pay Law will be published by Hart in 2020. A previous monograph, Stories of Care: A Labour of Law (2017) is the first to have been awarded prizes for excellence from both the Socio-Legal Studies Association and Society of Legal Scholars.
Professor Hayes teaches Public Law to undergraduate students at Kent and is happy to supervise PhD students in respect of empirical qualitative research in law, women and law or employment rights and trade union law.
Professor Hayes is one of three new Professors of Law to be appointed by Kent Law School; Professor Shaun McVeigh (previously Melbourne Law School) and Professor Alain Pottage (London School of Economics) will arrive on campus in January 2020.