Meet the team

Sophia Ayada (UCL), Research Fellow in Law, is soon to complete her Ph.D. in Law from the European University Institute (Florence). Her research focuses on the uses of gender stereotyping and anti-stereotyping in the CJEU jurisprudence, and their consequences on women’s rights and emancipation. She is author of articles and contributions on EU gender equality and anti-discrimination law and acted as a researcher for cross-disciplinary projects concerning domestic violence and European free movement law.   


Dr Ashlee Christoffersen (University of Edinburgh), Research Fellow, specialises in understandings and uses of intersectionality in policy and practice. Her work appears in Policy & Politics*, Ethnic and Racial Studies*, British Politics and The Palgrave Handbook of Intersectionality in Public Policy. She has held research and practitioner roles at the Equality Challenge Unit, centred, the Trades Union Congress, and the Institute for Intersectionality Research and Policy, Simon Fraser University, Canada.


Professor Hazel Conley (UWE Bristol), Co-Investigator, is an expert in discrimination and inequality in the workplace, particularly in relation to the development and effectiveness of legal interventions. She is co-author of Gender Equality in Public Services; Chasing the Dream (2014, Routledge) and co-editor of The Gender Pay Gap and Social Partnership in Europe (2019, Routledge


Dr Frances Galt (UWE Bristol), Research Fellow, specialises in feminist labour history in twentieth-century Britain. Her PhD examined the relationship between women workers and trade unions in the British film and television industries. She is author of Women’s Activism Behind the Screens: Trade Unions and Gender Equality in the British Film and Television Industries (2020, Bristol University Press).


Professor Louise Jackson (University of Edinburgh), Principal Investigator, is a social historian of women and gender (with a particular interest in the work culture of policing). She is co-author of Police and Community in Twentieth Century Scotland (2020, Edinburgh University Press) and a co-editor of Women and Work Culture: Britain c. 1850-1950 (2005, Ashgate).


Professor Fiona Mackay (University of Edinburgh), Co-Investigator, is an expert in gender and political representation, feminist institutionalism, gender and institutional change, gender and public policy. She is co-editor of Gender, Politics and Institutions: Towards a Feminist Institutionalism (2011/15, Palgrave Macmillan) and Doing Feminisms in the Academy (2020, Zubaan Publications and University of Chicago Press).


Professor Colm O’Cinneide (UCL), Co-Investigator, is an expert in the field of comparative constitutional, human rights and anti-discrimination law, and is co-author of Discrimination Law: Theory and Context (2008, Sweet & Maxwell). He has acted as specialist legal adviser to the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Women & Equalities Committee of the UK Parliament, and has also advised a range of international organisations including the UN, ILO and the European Commission.


Tanya Rhodes is the project’s Communications and Engagement Officer. Originally a journalist, Tanya has worked in communications, events and PR in a wide range of private, public and third sector organisations, including Scottish Women’s Aid, Heriot-Watt University and the Faculty of Sport and Exercise Medicine. As well as supporting the project communications, Tanya is a student on the postgraduate Arts, Festival and Cultural Management programme at Queen Margaret University.