Associate Professor Alysia Blackham

Overview

Alysia Blackham is an Associate Professor at Melbourne Law School. She is an internationally renowned expert on age discrimination law and the consequences of ageing for workplaces. Her research focuses on the intersection of employment law, equality law and public law, using empirical evidence to cast new light on legal problems. Alysia’s scholarship has been awarded the UK Society of Legal Scholars’ Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship twice: for Extending Working Life for Older Workers: Age Discrimination Law, Policy and Practice (Hart, 2016) – second prize, 2017; and for Reforming Age Discrimination Law: Beyond Individual Enforcement (2022, Oxford Monographs on Labour Law, Oxford University Press) – first prize, 2023.

From 2017–21, funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher grant (DE170100228 “Addressing Age Discrimination in Employment”), Alysia explored the ways in which age discrimination law is enforced in Australia and the UK, and the barriers to effectively addressing age discrimination at work. The results of this project are available at http://ageworks.info/

Alysia has worked as an academic in Australia, Sweden and the UK, including as the Turpin-Lipstein Fellow and College Lecturer in Law and Director of Studies at Clare College, Cambridge and an Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge. Alysia also has experience of legal practice and organisational management, having worked as an employment law solicitor at Herbert Smith Freehills in Sydney, and Executive Officer to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Corporate Services) at the University of Technology, Sydney. Alysia holds a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws (with First Class Honours) from the University of Melbourne, and a PhD in Law from Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge.

Alysia is a member of the Australian Discrimination Law Experts Group, Australian Labour Law Association, UK Society of Legal Scholars, and UK Socio-Legal Studies Association.

Other School and University Responsibilities

• Director of Teaching (MLS)
• Member, Higher Degrees by Research Committee, Academic Board
• Member, Selection Procedures Committee, Academic Board
• Academic Staff Representative, University of Melbourne, UniSuper Consultative Committee