Alysia Blackham

Professor Alysia Blackham is a Professor at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne. She 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. Her professional career encompasses academic appointments in Australia, Sweden, and the UK, including Turpin-Lipstein Fellow and College Lecturer in Law and Director of Studies at Clare College, Cambridge, as well as Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge. Prior to academia, she worked as an employment law solicitor at Herbert Smith Freehills in Sydney and as Executive Officer to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Corporate Services) at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Alysia Blackham is an internationally renowned expert on age discrimination law and the consequences of ageing for workplaces. Her scholarship examines the intersection of employment law, equality law, and public law, utilising empirical evidence to illuminate legal issues. Key projects include analysis of age discrimination law enforcement in Australia and the UK, funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher grant (DE170100228, 2017–2021). Prominent publications are Extending Working Life for Older Workers: Age Discrimination Law, Policy and Practice (Hart Publishing, 2016), which earned second prize in the UK Society of Legal Scholars’ Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship (2017), and Reforming Age Discrimination Law: Beyond Individual Enforcement (Oxford University Press, 2022), recipient of the first prize in the same award (2023). Within the university, she serves as Director of Teaching at Melbourne Law School, member of the Higher Degrees by Research Committee and Selection Procedures Committee of the Academic Board, and Academic Staff Representative on the University of Melbourne UniSuper Consultative Committee. She is also a member of the Australian Discrimination Law Experts Group, Australian Labour Law Association, UK Society of Legal Scholars, and UK Socio-Legal Studies Association.

Professional Email: alysia.blackham@unimelb.edu.au