Prof Diamond Ashiagbor

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Diamond Ashiagbor is Professor of Law at the University of Kent, and is widely regarded as a leading academic in European Union law, labour/employment law, and equality law. She was awarded the Society of Legal Scholars/Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship for her book on European Union employment law and the economics of labour market regulation. In 2020, Diamond was made Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FacSS), for her contribution to social science.

She was previously Professor of Law and Director of Research at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (University of London), Professor of Labour Law at SOAS University of London, and Reader in Law at University College London.

Diamond qualified as a solicitor with trade union firm Robin Thompson and Partners (now Thompsons). She was elected Honorary Bencher of Middle Temple in 2018. She has twice served as a ‘senior expert’ to the project team for a European Commission-funded investigation: a Comparative study on access to justice in gender equality and anti-discrimination law; and an Analysis of the interaction between the EU acquis and ILO Conventions. Diamond has also served as a consultant to trade unions and charities on indidivual employment law and collective labour law; race, sex and disability discrimination law. She is a former Executive Committee Member of the Industrial Law Society.

Since 2023, Diamond has been a Trustee of Black Cultural Archives, the UK’s only national heritage centre dedicated to collecting, preserving and celebrating the histories of African and Caribbean people in Britain.

Diamond’s current research focuses on informal and non-standard work (‘zero hours’ contracts, agency work, platform-mediated work); and on the legacies of colonialism for contemporary employment, for which she was awarded a British Academy/ Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship in 2023. She is a current or former member of the editorial committees of European Law Open; Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal; London Review of International Law.

As Professor of law, Diamond teaches and supervises research degrees on employment and equality law, labour migration, human rights law, public law, EU and African Union law, and law and development. Diamond’s academic work has received funding from the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the US-EU Fulbright Program, the Economic and Social Research Council, and the Society of Legal Scholars.

Background

Diamond studied law at the University of Oxford, before qualifying as a solicitor in 1993. In 2002, she completed a PhD at the European University Institute in Florence in European Union employment law and policy. She undertook a postdoctoral fellowship in EU law at the University of Oxford before moving to University College London in 2004, where she was Lecturer and then Reader in Law. Diamond was awarded an EU-US Fulbright Research Scholarship to undertake research as a Visiting Scholar at Columbia Law School, New York. She moved to SOAS University of London to be Professor of Labour Law in 2010, focusing on the teaching of international labour law and human rights. She served as Professor of Law and Director of Research at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London, before moving to a Professorship at the University of Kent in 2018. She has held visiting positions at Harvard Law School’s Institute for Global Law and Policy; Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto; and Melbourne Law School.

Academic positions

• September-December 2024: Senior Visiting Research Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London
• October 2018-date: Professor of Law, Kent Law School, University of Kent
• October 2016-Oct 2018: Professor of Law and Director of Research, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London
• September 2010-September 2016: Professor of Labour Law, SOAS University of London
• September 2007- September 2010: Reader in Law, University College London
• September-December 2007, Visiting Scholar, Columbia Law School, New York,
• September 2004-September 2007: Lecturer in Law, University College London
• September 2002-August 2004, Career Development Fellow in EC Law, University of Oxford; Junior Research Fellow, Worcester College, Oxford
• September 1998-June 2002: Doctoral Researcher, Department of Law, European University Institute
• October 1996-September 1998: Lecturer in Law, Law School, University of Hull

Publications

Books and edited collections

(ed) Re-imagining labour law for development: Informal work in the global North and South, Hart Publishing, 2019

(with Nicola Countouris & Ioannis Lianos (eds)) The European Union after the Treaty of Lisbon, Cambridge University Press, 2012

The European Employment Strategy: Labour Market Regulation and New Governance, Oxford University Press, 2005 [Winner of the Society of Legal Scholars/Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship]

Selected articles and book chapters

‘Rethinking EU Social and Labour Law through Racial Capitalism’ in Hanna Eklund (ed) Colonialism and the EU Legal Order, Cambridge University Press, 2024

‘Race and Colonialism in the Construction of Labour Markets and Precarity’ (2021) 50:4, Industrial Law Journal, 506-531

‘Labour and employment’ in Mariana Valverde, Eve Darian-Smith, Kamari Clarke and Prabha Kotiswaran (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Law and Society, Routledge, 2021

‘Theorizing the Relationship Between Social Law and Markets in Regional Integration Projects’ (2018) 27: 4 Social & Legal Studies, 435-455

‘Religion and equality in multicultural workplaces: Human rights and anti-discrimination discourses in EU law’ in Alan Bogg, Cathryn Costello, and ACL Davies (eds) Edward Elgar Research Handbook on EU Labour Law, 2016

‘Article 15 freedom to choose an occupation and right to engage in work, and Article 29, right of access to placement services’ in Steve Peers, Tamara Hervey, Jeff Kenner and Angela Ward (eds) Commentary on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, Hart Publishing, 2014

‘Unravelling the Embedded Liberal Bargain: Labour and Social Welfare Law in the Context of EU Market Integration’ (2013) 19:3 European Law Journal, 303-324

‘Collective Labour Rights and the European Social Model’ (2009) 3:2 Journal of Law and Ethics of Human Rights, 222-266

‘Multiple Discrimination in a Multicultural Europe: Achieving Labour Market Equality Through New Governance’ (2008) 61:1 Current Legal Problems, 265-288

‘The Right To Work’ in Gráinne de Búrca and Bruno de Witte, with Larissa Ogertschnig (eds) Social Rights in Europe: Changes and Challenges, Oxford University Press, 2005

‘Economic and Social Rights in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights’ (2004) 1 European Human Rights Law Review, pp 62-72