Dr Katrina Peake

Biography

Professional Biography

Dr Katrina Peake is a Lecturer in Law (Early Career) at The Open University, where she teaches Business and Employment Law, Land Law, and Exploring Legal Meaning. She has presented her work at national and international conferences and has experience delivering seminars to academic, policy, and practitioner audiences. Katrina completed her LLB (first class), LLM (Distinction), and PhD at the University of Nottingham. Her doctoral thesis, funded by the Midlands3Cities Doctoral Training Partnership, received the DJ Harris Prize for Best Doctoral Thesis in the School of Law (2019/2020).

Research Interests

Katrina’s research centres on international trade law, labour rights, corporate social responsibility, modern slavery, and international development. She is currently developing research on labour rights in the cocoa Global Value Chain (GVC) through her project, “From Exploitation to Equity: A Trade-Based Approach to Responsible Cocoa,” which examines labour standards in Côte d'Ivoire and Ecuador and analyses UK and EU trade instruments, including free trade agreements and the forthcoming EU forced labour ban. She is a member of the OU's Centre for the Study of Global Development (CSGD) hub on poverty, inequality and social protection. She also researches labour rights within generalised schemes of preferences, particularly of the EU and UK.

Her PhD investigated the extent to which EU trade and sustainable development instruments promote labour rights in the South Asian garment industry, with detailed case studies on Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam and relevant trade schemes, including the generalised scheme of preferences and conditionality.

Beyond her doctoral work, she has contributed to the EU-funded, multi-institutional, “Fostering Human Rights Among European Policies” (FRAME) project, examining EU trade, development, and human rights engagement in Bangladesh following the Rana Plaza factory collapse and the EU’s engagement with civil society actors. She disseminated research findings at international conferences, including representing the FRAME project in New Delhi.

Prior to joining the OU, she was a Research Fellow at the Rights Lab, where she worked on projects addressing Indo-Pacific modern slavery risks, Brexit and labour exploitation, and commercial sexual exploitation policy in South Asia.

Teaching Interests

An Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Katrina’s teaching interests include EU law, human rights law, business law, employment law, and international relations. Before joining the OU, she taught EU Law, Employment Law, and International Relations of the EU at the University of Nottingham and completed the university’s Associate Teachers Programme.

Impact and Engagement

Katrina has worked as a Visiting Scholar with the International Labour Organization in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, conducting interviews with garment-sector stakeholders, participating in factory visits, and delivering seminars on EU trade and labour rights.

She also served as a Clinical Fellow with the HEC–NYU Public Interest Clinic, working with Clean Clothes Campaign and the International Trade Union Confederation. Katrina supervised students on a submission to the EU Ombudsman concerning EU responses to labour rights violations in Bangladesh.

She is committed to public engagement and translational research, having organised a series of events on labour rights in Nottingham’s lace and knitting industries in collaboration with local heritage groups and museums.