Pauline Roberts
Senior Lecturer in Law
- robertspi@cardiff.ac.uk
- +44(0)29 2087 5108
- 1.08, Law Building, Museum Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3AX
Overview
I am a Senior Lecturer at Cardiff, having joined the Law School as a lecturer in 1995. This followed a period as a Research Assistant in the Company & Commercial Law team at the Law Commission of England and Wales, where I worked on the Consultation Paper on Shareholder Remedies. I moved into legal research after first qualifying as a solicitor at Linklaters & Paines, London.
I established the Discrimination & Law module on the LLB degree programme, reflecting my research interest in the legal regulation of discrimination in the workplace. While maintaining my work on equality in employment, I have extended my research focus towards the impact of the equality legal framework in educational settings. My current project investigates experiences within schools in Wales in relation to the Equality Act 2010, based on interviews with head teachers and other senior members of school leadership teams. The research draws upon the interviewees’ experience of equality issues in general, before focusing on their experience of drafting Strategic Equality Plans and responding to the needs of students who are disabled.
I am currently the Chair of the LLB Examining Board and a member of the School's Equality and Diversity Committee.
I continue to teach Discrimination & Law, together with Contract Law, and supervise dissertations on the LLB and LLM programmes.
Biography
After studying Law as an undergraduate at Cambridge, I qualified as a solicitor in 1992. I completed my LLM studies at Edinburgh in 1994 and then joined the Law Commission of England and Wales as a Research Assistant, before moving to Cardiff in 1995.
Visiting lecturerships:
- University of Innsbruck (2009)
- University of Nantes (2007)
- Charles University, Prague (2003)
- Université de Picardie, Jules Verne, Amiens (2003)
- Konstanz University (2003)
Professional memberships
- Society of Legal Scholars
- Employment Lawyers Association
- Industrial Law Society
- Law and Religion Scholars Network
Academic positions
2015 - present: Senior Lecturer, Cardiff University
1995-2015: Lecturer, Cardiff University
Speaking engagements
| Date | Title | Event |
|---|---|---|
April 2017 | Employment security and disability: dismissal for misconduct and the duty to make reasonable adjustments | SLSA Annual Conference, Newcastle |
June 2015 | Disabled university students and the Equality Act (with E Hou) | The Equality Act 2010: five years on Conference, University of Chester |
May 2014 | Employment security and disability: capability, behaviour and the duty to make reasonable adjustments | Kingston University |
May 2011 | Public Sector Equality Duties Plenary Panel (by invitation) | Public Law Project Wales Conference - Duties, Devolution and Access to Justice |
May 2011 | Time off in emergencies, flexibility and equality: carers in the workplace | Contemporary Issues in Labour Law seminar, Kingston University |
| April 2010 | School Exclusion and the Disability Discrimination Act: individual and collective responses to disability-related behaviour | SLSA Annual Conference, University of the West of England, Bristol |
| September 2006 | Public authorities and their duty to promote race equality: the impact on the workplace | Society of Legal Scholars Conference, Keele |
| September 2003 | Sexual Orientation Discrimination: The Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003 | Society of Legal Scholars Conference, Oxford |
| September 2003 | The Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003: A legislative overview (by invitation) | The Stonewell Conference/Equal Opportunities Commission Equality Exchange Seminars, Cardiff |
| May 2003 | ‘Discrimination: Sexual Orientation - looking at the shape of the new law’ (by invitation) | The Employment Lawyers' Association |
Committees and reviewing
- Trustee, ategi (2015-)
- Member of the Employment Lawyers Association Working Party on the Government consultation: 'Equality Act 2010: consultation on employer liability for harassment of employees by third parties' (2012)
- Assistant Editor, Legal Studies (1999-2001; editors Celia Wells and Derek Morgan)
- Journal reviewer, Legal Studies and the Journal of Law and Society.
Publications
We are currently unable to retrieve the list of publications. Visit our institutional repository.Teaching
At undergraduate level, I am module leader, lecturer and tutor on Discrimination & Law.
I also co-module lead and lecture on Contract Law, a first year undergraduate module.
I often supervise final year undergraduate dissertations, as well as dissertations on the LLM degree programme.
I have also taught Labour Law and Company Law.
The underlying theme of my recent research is disability discrimination, both in the workplace and in education. I am currently completing an analysis of employment tribunal decisions in which the tribunal was required to adjudicate in claims of both unfair dismissal and disability discrimination. This work assesses how adjudicators apply the various standards of review in these types of cases, and whether there is evidence of confusion and/or inconsistency in the adjudication of these claims.
During a recent period of university study leave I commenced a project to identify some of the current equality challenges faced by schools in Wales. This involved interviewing senior leaders in a range of schools. The interviews were designed with a two-fold purpose: first, to identify potential general equality issues arising in schools today; secondly, to assess the challenges in relation to two specific aspects of the Equality Act 2010, namely disability and the public sector equality duty.
Supervision
I am interested in supervising PhD students in the areas of:
- Equality law and education
- The legal response to disability discrimination in the workplace