Katrina Peake

Katrina Peake

Lecturer in Law (Early Career), The Open University, UK; ChainGE Research Fellow

Dr Katrina Peake is a Lecturer in Law at The Open University, UK. Her research focuses on international trade law, labour rights, corporate social responsibility, modern slavery, and international development. She completed her PhD at the University of Nottingham, where she was awarded the DJ Harris Prize for Best Doctoral Thesis (2019/2020). Her doctoral research examined the effectiveness of EU trade and sustainable development instruments in promoting labour rights within the Ready-Made Garment (RMG) industry in South Asia, drawing on extensive qualitative fieldwork, including interviews with trade unions, employer and government officials.

Prior to joining The Open University, Katrina worked as a Research Fellow at the Rights Lab, University of Nottingham, contributing to projects on trade and modern slavery in the Indo-Pacific, Brexit, and commercial sexual exploitation in South Asia. She has also been a Visiting Scholar with the International Labour Organisation in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. In addition, she served as a Clinical Fellow with the HEC-NYU Public Interest Clinic, working on a Clean Clothes Campaign and International Trade Union Confederation complaint to the EU Ombudsman concerning the EU’s failure to initiate a trade investigation against Bangladesh. Her interest in trade and labour rights developed during her earlier work as a Research Assistant on the EU-funded Fostering Human Rights Among European Policies (FRAME) project.

Katrina is researching the use of trade instruments (including free trade agreements, economic partnership agreements, the generalised scheme of preferences and forced labour bans) and their impact on workers’ rights in the cocoa global value chain.

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