Lucy Vickers

Lucy Vickers is Professor of Law and Director of Research at Oxford Brookes University's School of Law and Social Sciences. She holds a MA and PhD, and is a SFHEA (Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy). Her academic leadership includes serving as President of the Society of Legal Scholars for 2022-2023.

Professor Vickers studied law at Queens' College, Cambridge, and qualified as a solicitor before joining Oxford Brookes University. Her research focuses on human rights protection within the workplace, with particular emphasis on religious discrimination and age equality. She has written extensively on freedom of speech at work, including protection for whistleblowing, and the right to freedom of speech under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Her scholarly output demonstrates consistent research activity with publications spanning from 2012 to 2025. Her work shows a clear trajectory examining religious freedom in employment contexts, age discrimination, and the evolving legal frameworks governing workplace equality. The most recent publications (2024-2025) continue her focus on religion and belief protection, particularly examining headscarf bans, teachers' rights in faith schools, and the development of legal protections since 2000.

• President of the Society of Legal Scholars (2022-2023)
• Author of "Freedom Of Speech and Employment" (2002) OUP
• Author of "Religious Freedom, Religious Discrimination and the Workplace" (2016, 2nd edition) Hart Publishing
• Author of European Commission report on Religion and Belief Discrimination in Employment (2007)
• Author of EHRC review of equality and human rights law relating to religion or belief (2015)

Professor Vickers teaches Criminal Law and Equality Law modules within the LLB Law program and the Graduate Diploma in Law. She supervises PhD students working on equality law, with particular interests in religious equality, age equality, and the Public Sector Equality Duty. Her current doctoral students include Richard Fretwell ("Religious Freedom in a Post-Christian Age") and Stephen Hurley ("The protection of non-religious philosophical belief in the British workplace").