Dr Erica Howard

Emeritus Professor

Erica Howard

  • School Faculty of Business and Law

  • Department Law and Social Sciences

  • Location London

Research activities

Research areas:

Equality and discrimination law at national and international level. Race discrimination. Religious discrimination. Sexual orientation discrimination. Multiple and intersectional discrimination. European employment, equality and anti-discrimination law. Human rights, especially the rights to freedom of religion and freedom of expression and the right to equality. Employment law. Hate speech (religious, racial and homophobic).

Main recent funding research and knowledge exchange:

 Senior advisor, Milieu Brussels, two EU contracts on race discrimination, 2024 and 2022.

20 July 2022: gave evidence on theprotection from all forms of contemporary discrimination based on religion orbelief and the need to include this in the International Convention on theElimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination to the United Nations Ad HocCommittee on the Elaboration of Complementary Standards to this Convention,which is negotiating a draft additional protocol to the Convention

2018-2022: RECONNECT: Reconciling Europe with its Citizens through Democracy and Rule of Law, Programme: H2020. UK team led by Professor Laurent Pech, with Dr Joseph Corkin and Dr Joelle Grogan. 

2018-2020: Project title PHS-Quality: Job Quality and Industrial relations in the Personal and Household sector, funded by European Commission, DG Employment, Scoial Affairs and Inclusion, UK partner with Professor Eleonore Kofman.

2017-2019: ‘Affirmative Action Measures’, exchange programme between Middlesex and the Universidade do Oeste de Santa Catarina, Chapeco, Brazil, with Professor Joshua Castellino and Dr Elvira Dominguez Redondo.

Regular contributor to seminars on European anti-discrimination law at the Academy of European Law, Trier, Germany (multiple discrimination, race, religion and belief discrimination, sexual orientation discrimination, sex discrimination in areas outside employment).


Biography

Erica Howard is Emeritus Professor of law. She joined Middlesex in 2007 and previously briefly taught European Union Law at the University of Hertfordshire. She holds a doctorate in law from the University of London on the subject of race and racial discrimination within the European Union.

Erica's areas of research are equality and discrimination law, human rights and European law. She has published widely on topics within this area including racial discrimination, religious discrimination and freedom of religion, freedom of speech, multiple discrimination and the right to equality. She has been involved in two projects for the British Equality and Human Rights Commission, a project on the right to freedom of religion or belief and its intersection with other rights for ILGA-Europe and two major European research projects on multiple discrimination; and a EU funded project on homo and transphobia in small and medium cities in Europe.

Erica has written a research study for the EU Parliament Research Service on the implementation of Directive 2000/78/EC with regard to the principle of non-discrimination on the basis of religion or belief. She has also written a report commissioned by the European Network of Legal Experts in Gender Equality and Non-discrimination for the European Commission, on 'Religious Clothing and Symbols in Employment'. Her recent research includes freedom of expression and religious hate speech.

Erica has supervised to completion six PhD students studying freedom of speech and defamation, disability discrimination, vulnerable domestic workers, age discrimination, the refugee pay gap  and vulnereable groups and protection of social rights.

PhD European Law (Queen Mary, University of London - 2007); LLM International Law (University of Hertfordshire - 1999); MA Sociology and Law (Brunel University - 1985); Masters in Law (Tilburg University, Holland - 1979); Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2018). Post-graduate Certificate of Higher Education (Middlesex, 2009).

Publications

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