Contributor(s): Alice Carse, Professor Nicola Lacey, Dr Astrid Sanders, Dr Sarah Trotter | A panel discussion of legal issues that arise from many people increasingly working from home, a pattern that seems likely to persist even after the Covid 19 pandemic has finished. Issues that will be considered include health and safety, working time, discrimination law, and the effectiveness of employment regulation.

Alice Carse practices in employment and industrial relations law at Devereux Chambers. She has particular experience of strikes and industrial action and has advised on some of the most high profile industrial disputes of recent years, for example acting (as junior counsel) for Royal Mail in successfully obtaining an injunction to prevent strike action over Christmas 2017. In summer 2020 Alice appeared (as junior counsel) for the successful Respondent in the Court of Appeal in Walker v Co-operative Bank leading a case on the material factor defence in equal pay claims. Alice is a contributing editor of Harvey on Industrial Relations and Employment Law.

Nicola Lacey is School Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy. From 1998 to 2010 she held a Chair in Criminal Law and Legal Theory at LSE; she returned to LSE in 2013 after spending three years as Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, and Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory at the University of Oxford. She has held a number of visiting appointments, most recently at Harvard Law School. She is an Honorary Fellow of New College Oxford and of University College Oxford; a Fellow of the British Academy; and a member of the Board of Trustees of the British Museum. In 2011 she was awarded the Hans Sigrist Prize by the University of Bern for outstanding scholarship on the function of the rule of law in late modern societies and in 2017 she was awarded a CBE for services to Law, Justice and Gender Politics.

Astrid Sanders is an Associate Professor of Labour Law and joined LSE in September 2013. She completed all her postgraduate and undergraduate studies at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford. Astrid was awarded her doctorate from the University of Oxford in 2009. As well as her D.Phil, she earlier obtained two other postgraduate degrees at Corpus Christi College. She also achieved outstanding marks as an undergraduate in her law examinations. The University of Oxford notably awarded her two prizes for Best Performance. Prior to joining LSE, she was a Lecturer at Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham for four years from 2009 to 2013.

Sarah Trotter joined the Law Department as an Assistant Professor in September 2018. Her research is about how particular categories (like ‘the child’ and ‘the individual’) are constructed in law and about the assumptions that are made in European human rights law and domestic law about relationships. She wrote her PhD thesis (‘On coming to terms: How European human rights law imagines the human condition’) at LSE. Prior to that, she studied at the University of Cambridge (LLM), Sciences Po (Erasmus year), and LSE (LLB).

Hugh Collins has published research in contract law, employment law, European law, legal theory, and human rights law. He is currently Cassel Professor of Commercial Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, having previously been the Vinerian Professor of English Law at All Souls College, Oxford 2014-2019, Professor of English Law at LSE 1991-2014, and a Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. He studied law at Oxford and Harvard. He is a Fellow of the British Academy. He served on the editorial committee of The Modern Law Review from 1991-2014, including a period as General Editor. He is co-founder of the European Review of Contract Law and has also served on the editorial committee of the Industrial Law Journal.

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This event forms part of LSE’s Shaping the Post-COVID World initiative, a series of debates about the direction the world could and should be taking after the crisis.