Professor Deirdre McCann

Deirdre McCann is Professor of Law and Policy at Durham Law School. Her research is in the field of labour law and policy at the domestic, EU and international levels. It has a particular focus on the influence of flexibility discourses on labour market regulation, precarious work, the measurement and comparison of labour law regimes and the influence of state norms in low-income settings. Her publications include Unacceptable forms of work: a multidimensional model, International Labour Review (with Judy Fudge, 2017); Creative Labour Regulation (Palgrave 2014) and Regulating Flexible Work (Oxford University Press 2008).

A former official of the International Labour Office in Geneva, Professor McCann has substantial experience in advising international policy actors, governments, and civil society organisations on labour law and policy. In recent years she has acted as an independent expert to the European Commission on the revision of the EU Working Time Directive and International Labour Organization on the Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No 189). Professor McCann is a founder and Co-Chair of the Organizing Committee of the international research Network on Regulating for Decent Work, a global interdisciplinary network of researchers and policy-makers that promotes innovative approaches to labour market regulation. She is on the editorial board of the Industrial Law Journal and a member of the Advisory Committee of the Labour Law Research Network.

Durham Team

Dr Arely Cruz-Santiago

Arely Cruz-Santiago holds a Doctorate in Human Geography from Durham University. She was a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Project Manager on the ESRC/GCRF Strategic Network on Unacceptable Forms of Work. Her research uncovers the intimate and invisible forms of labour performed by families, communities and non-state agencies in the search for the missing. Her doctoral research analysed the different ways in which private citizens in Mexico engage in practices of forensics after the disappearance of a loved one— through data collection, creation of lines of enquiry for investigation, and location of clandestine burial sites. During 2014 – 2015 she was the Co-Investigator on the ESRC-funded project ‘Citizen-led forensics: DNA & data-banking as technologies of disruption’. Her publications include (2016) ‘Pure Corpses, Dangerous Citizens: transgressing the boundaries between mourners and experts in the search for the disappeared in Mexico’. Social Research: An International Quarterly 83(2): 483 – 510, and (2016) Forensic Civism: Articulating Science, DNA and kinship in Mexico and Colombia. Journal Human Remains and Violence. 2(1):58-74. Arely holds an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Geography at Durham University.

Ms Karina Patricio Ferreira Lima

Karina Patricio Ferreira Lima  is a lecturer in Commercial Law at the School of Law, University of Leeds. Previously she was a doctoral researcher, part-time tutor and Modern Law Review Scholar from Durham Law School. She worked as a research assistant in the ESRC/GCRF Strategic Network on Legal Regulation of Unacceptable Forms of Work. Karina's research interests lie in the role of law in the world's political and economic organisation, especially under a distributive perspective. Her  research contributes to the political economy foundations of an international law on sovereign insolvency. Karina speaks English, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Dr Anne Posthuma

Senior Specialist for Employment and Labour Market Policies

International Labour Organization, ILO Office in Brazil

Ms Manuela Tomei

Director, Conditions of Work and Equality Department

International Labor Organization (ILO), Geneva