Dr Alex Patrick

Dr Alex Patrick joined the University of Reading School of Law team as a Lecturer in Law in September 2025. Her research focuses on anti-discrimination law, with a particular specialism in the right to equal pay, the gender pay gap, and the effectiveness of pay transparency measures in promoting workplace equality. Her publications examine the right to equal pay between women and men performing work of equal value, as well as regulatory tools (both voluntary and mandatory) designed to address systemic pay inequality. Her ongoing research explores whether and how equal pay auditing and gender, race, and disability pay gap reporting can enhance employer accountability in substantive equality outcomes. She also has a research background in the intersection of family and criminal law and feminist legal theory, focusing on law’s treatment of victims/survivors of intimate partner abuse.

Before joining the University of Reading, Alex worked as a Lecturer in Law at Middlesex University. At Middlesex, Alex was the LLB Programme Leader, and module leader for Child and Family Law (LLB). She also taught on the Legal Skills (LLB) and Business Law (for non-LLB students) modules, and supervised PhD and LLM dissertation students in various fields, including the social rights of vulnerable racial and ethnic groups under EU and international law. 

Alex completed her PhD in law at the University of Southampton in 2023. Her PhD examined the right to equal pay between women and men performing work of equal value, and the role of pay transparency policies in prompting employers to rectify discriminatory pay practices. 

Prior to her PhD, Alex completed her LLB and MPhil at the University of Adelaide in Australia, and her Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice at the Australian National University. Alex qualified as a lawyer of the New South Wales Supreme Court in 2016.