Dr Arwen Joyce

I joined Leicester Law School as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in September 2017 and took up a lectureship in January 2021. My research interests include migration law, labour law and legal education. I am a University Distinguished Teaching Fellow and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I am also a Trustee of the Socio-Legal Studies Association and a co-organiser of Connecting Legal Education.

I previously practiced law with Linklaters LLP in London and Singapore and lectured at Singapore Management University. I hold a BA from the University of Virginia, a JD cum laude from Georgetown University, an LLM with merit from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a PhD in Law from the University of Leicester. I am a non-practicing member of the New York Bar.

Arwen Joyce, Low-wage Labour Migration Regimes in Asia: Lessons from across the governance spectrum (Routledge 2026).

Arwen Joyce, ‘Labour Rights’ in Vincent Chetail (ed), Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Migration and Asylum Law (Edward Elgar 2025).

Arwen Joyce, ‘Low-wage’ not ‘low-skill’: moving away from the skills binary in labour migration discourse’ (2025) Socio-Legal Studies Association Blog.

Arwen Joyce, 'Reducing worker exploitation in time-limited, low-wage visa schemes: lessons from South Korea and Thailand' (2024) 53 Industrial Law Journal 1, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/indlaw/dwad035.

Arwen Joyce and Bernard Ryan, 'Migration and Exploitation in Employment: Editorial Introduction' (2024) 53 Industrial Law Journal 1, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/indlaw/dwad037.

Arwen Joyce, Article 8 ECHR, Family Reunification and the UK's Supreme Court: Family Matters? (2024) 38(1) Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law 108.

Maribel Canto-Lopez, Arwen Joyce, and Nataly Papadopoulou, 'Legal Skills for Citizens of Change Conference at University of Leicester explores legal skills from multiple perspectives' (2023) Association of Law Teachers Blog.

Victoria Ball, Arwen Joyce and Charlotte Mills, A Small Group Teaching Best Practice Guide Grounded in the Student Voice (Association of Law Teachers 2023)  (accessed 3 June 2026).

 Victoria Ball and Arwen Joyce, 'A Teaching Best Practice Guide for Early Career Academics in UK Law Schools Grounded in the Student Voice' (2022) 3 European Journal of Legal Education 69.

Arwen Joyce, Becoming a critical thinker (2021) 55 The Law Teacher 559.

Arwen Joyce, '#VirtualSLSA2020: South Korea's Employment Permit System: Policy Innovations and Power Dynamics' (2020) Socio-Legal Studies Association Blog.

Victoria Ball, Arwen Joyce and Charlotte Mills, ‘“They Just Have More of a Vibe of Being ‘One of Us’”: Undergraduate Law Student Perceptions of PhD Tutors’ (2020) 54 The Law Teacher 327.

Arwen Joyce, 'Working Across Borders: The Limits of Labour Law for Low-Wage Temporary Migrant Workers' (2019) 5 Revista Estudos Institucionais 699.

Tamar Ezer, Arwen Joyce, Priscila McCalley and Neil Pacamalan, 'Protecting Women's Human Rights: A Case Study in the Philippines' (2011) 18 [3] Human Rights Brief 21.

Arwen Joyce and Tracye Winfrey, 'Taming the Red Dragon: A Realistic Assessment of the ABA's Legal Reform Efforts in China' (2004) 17 Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 887.

Undergraduate

• Immigration Law
• Tort Law

Postgraduate LLM

• International Migration Law

• University Distinguished Teaching Fellow Award (July 2025)
• Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation Small Grant: £2,000 (May 2025) To assess the impact of Japan's labour migration policies on low-wage migrant workers.
• 'Best lecturer for first year', Leicester University Law Society Awards 2024.
• University of Leicester CSSAH Teaching Development Fund: £2,019 (Jan 2024) Project to investigate the positivity gap between Black students and white students at Leicester Law School.
• Student Experience Champion, University of Leicester Citizens’ Awards 2023.
• University of Leicester CSSAH Teaching Development Fund: £1,750 (Feb 2022) Funding to put on a film screening and awards event to showcase films made by Analysing Law students.
• University of Leicester CSSAH Teaching Development Fund and Leicester Law School Research Funding: £1,608 (Feb 2022) Funding to carry out empirical research assessing the role of professional skills in a law degree.
• Erasmus+ Staff Mobility Funding: £2,460 (May 2022) Funded research exchange to the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
• Modern Law Review Seminar Fund: £1,591 (Jan 2020) With Professor Bernard Ryan. Funding to host a one-day workshop at the University of Leicester titled 'Migration and Exploitation in Employment: Concepts, Designs and Responses'.
• Association of Law Teachers Research Grant: £1,000 (Aug 2019) With Vicki Ball and Charlotte Mills. Funding to carry out empirical research on effective law tutorial delivery and disseminate results.
• Chris Gale Memorial Prize for Best Joint Paper: £250 (Apr 2019) With Vicki Ball and Charlotte Mills. Awarded for the best joint paper presented at the Association of Law Teachers Conference 2019.

Selected labour migration-related conference papers

‘Courts as agents of positive change for low-wage migrant workers’ rights in Asia’, Amsterdam Centre for Migration and Refugee Law Conference, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (June 2026)

‘A degrowth critique of Asia’s growth-dependent low-wage visa schemes’, Socio-Legal Studies Association Conference, University of Sussex (April 2026)

‘Low-wage labour migration in Asia: In search of recruitment policies that work for workers’, Labour Law Research Network Conference 7, Bangkok (July 2025)

‘Low-wage Labour Migration Regimes in Asia: Lessons from across the governance spectrum’, Institute of Comparative Culture, Sophia University, Tokyo (June 2025)

‘Low-wage labour migration in Asia: In search of recruitment policies that work for workers’, Waseda Institute of Asian Migrations & Waseda Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, 2025 WIAPS Colloquium Series, Waseda University, Tokyo (June 2025)

‘Litigating violations of low-wage migrant workers’ rights: lessons from South Korea and Thailand’, Socio-Legal Studies Association Conference, University of Liverpool (April 2025)

‘Strategic Litigation on Behalf of Migrant Workers: To What Extent and How Can Litigation Help Improve Their Working and Living Conditions?’, DignityFIRM webinar (January 2025)

‘Protecting migrant workers’ rights in court: A comparative analysis of apex court cases addressing low-wage migrant workers’ rights in Singapore and South Korea’, Socio-Legal Studies Association Conference, University of Portsmouth (April 2024)

‘What drives different regulatory approaches to low-wage migrant worker visa schemes?’, WINIR Workshop on Regulation and the Common Good, University of Sheffield (October 2023)

‘Assessing the benefits and limitations of a government-managed approach to low-wage labour migration in South Korea and Thailand’, Labour Law Research Network Conference 6, Warsaw (June 2023)

‘Assessing the benefits and limitations of a government-managed approach to low-wage labour migration in South Korea and Thailand’, Socio-Legal Studies Association Conference, Ulster University (April 2023)

‘Assessing the impact of a government-managed approach to low-wage labour migration in South Korea and Thailand’, Migration and Exploitation in Employment Workshop: Concepts, Designs and Responses, University of Leicester (September 2022)

‘Protecting migrant workers’ rights in court: a comparative analysis of decisions from the Singapore Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court of South Korea’, SLS-sponsored Collaborative Workshop for Labour Law, Migration & Asylum, Human Rights, and Public Law, University of Bristol (July 2022)

‘An ethical assessment of temporary migrant worker programmes that foregrounds migrant workers and their interests’, Socio-Legal Studies Association Conference, York University (April 2022)

‘Migration Law Perspective: Prioritising migrant workers’ interests in low-wage temporary migrant worker programme policy reform’, Symposium on Agency, Community, Kinship: Representations of Migration Beyond Victimhood, University of Wuppertal (February 2022)

‘A typology of low-wage temporary migrant worker programmes in East and Southeast Asia’, Socio-Legal Studies Association Conference, Cardiff University (April 2021)

‘Impact of the pandemic on migration’, Panel on Migration in Changing Times, 2020 Leicester Human Rights Arts and Film Festival, Leicester (December 2020)

‘Low-Wage Migrant Workers in South Korea: Policy Innovations and Power Dynamics’ Society of Legal Scholars Graduate Conference, University of Exeter (September 2020)

‘The limits of labour law and low-wage temporary migrant workers in Asia’, Society of Legal Scholars Conference, University of Central Lancashire (September 2019)

‘The law and low-wage migrant workers in Asia’, TWC2 Research Forum, Singapore Management University (August 2019)

‘Working across borders: labour law theory and low-wage migrant workers’ Socio-Legal Studies Association Conference, University of Leeds (April 2019)