Shubha Banerjee is a new Lecturer In Law at Queen Mary. She talks to us about herself and her work.
I have been a solicitor for over 20 years, specialising in employment law and acting on behalf of workers and trade unions. Most recently, I was in practice at Leigh Day, a human rights firm, where I acted for about 250 judges who were suing the government over changes to their pensions. In line with public sector changes announced in 2012, older public sector workers were allowed to remain in their very good pension schemes, whilst younger workers were required to leave and join a less beneficial scheme. We therefore brought claims against the government (the Ministry of Justice) for age discrimination. Indirect race and sex discrimination claims were also brought against the government, because the younger cohort of judges comprised of larger numbers of women judges and Black and Minority Ethnic judges, as a result of recent drives to improve diversity in the Judiciary. We were ultimately successful and the judgment has impacted other public sector workers too.
I then decided that I had litigated enough, and wanted to move into the academic world. I did a Masters degree at Birkbeck College during Covid, in Culture, Diaspora and Ethnicity, and then started working at Queen Mary in 2022, initially covering Fran Ridout’s period of parental leave in the LAC and then doing other bits of teaching, all of which I loved. I secured a permanent contract (T&S) a few months ago.
I’m teaching Legal Skills, Method and Context this semester, and then covering Fran’s parental leave again from next semester, teaching on both the QMLAC modules and managing the LAC itself. Next semester I will also be teaching one of Lizzie Barmes’ Labour Law modules, ‘Individual Protections, Human Rights and Workplace Justice’. I’m hoping that the QMLAC work will be familiar to me this time around, and I’ve found that my practical and real life examples from private practice are always useful for the LAC modules. I also hope to bring my employment law experience to the Labour Law module.