Personal Statement
Maayan joined the School of Law and Social Justice in January 2024. Before joining the School, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Modern Slavery and Human Rights at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, University of Oxford.
She holds PhD in Law from Kent Law School and MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics. She is an Associate Fellow of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, University of Oxford.

Maayan's socio-legal research focuses on trafficking for labour exploitation, the regulation of labour migration, and the rights of non-citizens. Her current project 'Work as a Site of Agency and a Site of Exploitation' compares the understanding of labour exploitation across policymakers, law enforcement agents and people with lived experience of exploitation, and was awarded a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grant.

Before her doctoral studies, she led the legal work on trafficking at the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants-Israel, worked on issues concerning the rights of Palestinian residents of the Occupied Palestinian Territories as a lawyer at Gisha-Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, and worked on issues related to trafficking at the Office of the National Anti-trafficking Coordinator, Israeli Ministry of Justice, and UNHCR. Her work on trafficking and slavery has been cited by NGOs, policymakers, and various courts including the Employment Court of New Zealand and Israel’s Supreme Court, and has been referred to in parliamentary committee meetings and national media.

Research Overview
My current project, 'Work as a Site of Agency and a Site of Exploitation' (funded by British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grant), compares the understanding of labour exploitation across policymakers, law enforcement agents and people with lived experience of exploitation.
‘Modern slavery’ has received growing attention within the UK, with the Modern Slavery Act (MSA) introduced as a new framework to address the worst forms of labour exploitation. While labour exploitation is central to the MSA framework, there is insufficient understanding within the modern slavery discourse of what it means. This Project addresses this gap and explores different perceptions of work as a site of agency and a site of exploitation, to inform the understanding of extreme labour exploitation, including modern slavery. Drawing on more than 40 interviews with migrant workers in precarious jobs, recognised victims of modern slavery, and law enforcement officials, it compares different official definitions to existing social understandings of these phenomena.

Publications from this project include:
‘What does labour exploitation really mean? Listening to migrant workers’. The Joseph Centre for Dignified Work, October 2025. https://www.josephcentre.org/post/what-does-labour-exploitation-really-mean-listening-to-migrant-workers
‘What do we mean by ‘labour exploitation’?’, Centre for the Study of International Slavery blog, 18 June 2025. https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/csis/blog/2023/what-do-we-mean-by-labour-exploitation/