Urmila Bhoola

Urmila Bhoola

BA(Hons) LLB LLM (Constitutional and Employment Equity Law)

ChainGE Lab Research Fellow

Urmila Bhoola is an international human rights lawyer and former judge of the Labour Court and High Court of South Africa. She served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery for two terms (2014-2020), and as Executive Director of International Women’s Watch Asia Pacific (2013-2015). She is a visiting research fellow at the University of Nottingham’s Rights Lab and Honorary Professor of Practice at University College London. Her research focus includes gender equality, modern slavery, human trafficking, forced labour, child labour as well as business and human rights.

Her research project at ChainGE Lab includes worker rights in the global economy, and more specifically transnational litigation to enforce worker rights in Global Value Chains. This includes understanding court decisions permitting or denying claims to hold transnational corporations involved in sourcing supply from the Global South legally accountable for labour and human rights violations.

Personal pages

Rights Lab Nottingham

University College London Honorary Professors of Practice