Professor Lydia Hayes

Personal Statement

Professor Lydia Hayes explores how legal rights and duties shape the lives, livelihoods and life chances of people in low wage work. What she calls ‘working people’s law’ includes minimum employment standards, welfare rights, equality law, occupational regulation, trade union law, criminal offences that arise specifically in employment. Her research is co-produced with low wage workers, it blends data gathered through community writing methods, story-telling, animation, and narrative production with rigorous analysis of statute, case law and regulatory text.

Prior to joining Liverpool, she was Professor and Head of Kent Law School and a Principal Investigator for Wellcome Trust. She has won awards for research excellence from the Socio-legal Studies Association (SLSA), Society of Legal Scholars (SLS), University of Bristol and Oxford University Press. Lydia has been a visiting scholar at RMIT, Melbourne and was awarded the first Journal of Law and Society Research Fellowship 2013-2016. She has previously worked at the International Labour Organisation in Geneva, at the Transport and General Workers Union, at University of Bristol and at Cardiff University. Lydia is a member of the Berkeley Centre for Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law and a board member of the Institute of Employment Rights. Her research has been funded by Leverhulme/British Academy, Wellcome Trust, ILO, Welsh Government, Journal of Law and Society, Wales TUC, UNISON Scotland, UNISON North West, GMB, All Party Parliamentary Group on Social Care, Oxfam UK, European Commission.