Professor Judy Fudge FBA

The legal regulation of work; comparative and transnational labour law; labour law and migration; social legal and historical approaches to the law of work and employment
Fellow type
International Fellow
Year elected
2026
Honours
FRSC
Sections
Law

Summary

Judy Fudge is a Canadian who first studied philosophy at McGill and York Universities, before turning to law and graduating from Osgoode Hall Law School, York University and the University of Oxford. She specialises in the broad area of labour law, using historical, social-legal, comparative, and doctrinal approaches.

After beginning her academic career in Canada (at Osgoode Hall Law School and the University of Victoria), she moved to England and taught at the University of Kent. She is Professor emeritus of Labour Studies at McMaster University, which she joined in July 2018.

She has also held visiting professorships and fellowships at universities and research institutes in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden. She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2013, received the Bora Laskin Award for her distinguished contribution to Canadian Labour Law in 2019, and awarded the Bob Hepple Award for Lifetime Achievement in Labour Law by the Labour Law Research Network in 2025. 

Her most recent book is 'Constructing Modern Slavery: Law Capitalism, and Unfree Labour' (Cambridge University Press,) and it was shortlisted for 2025 the W. Wesley Pue Book Prize (awarded annually by the Canadian Law and Society Association for the best book on law and society published in the previous year in English or in French).

Current post

McMaster University Professor Emeritus

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