Dr Karla Perez Portilla
Lecturer in Law
Department of Economics and Law
Karla has a PhD in Law from UCL, an MSc in Equality and Discrimination from Strathclyde and an LLB completed in Mexico (UNAM).
Karla is a member of the Equality and Diversity Committee of the Law Society of Scotland; the International Network of Hate Studies; the International Media Lawyers Association; and the Socio-Legal Studies Association.
Before joining GCU, she worked in Mexico for the Institute for Legal Research (IIJ-UNAM), taught at the University of Strathclyde, Faculty of Education and at University College London, Faculty of Law. She also has interest and experience working in the third sector, designing, delivering and evaluating prejudice reduction programmes and educational initiatives mostly funded by the Scottish Government. Themes have included, guidance to the Equality Act 2010; hate crime awareness and third party reporting; mainstreaming anti-sectarianism into equalities; evaluation of See Me, Scotland’s national programme to end mental health stigma and discrimination; and Challenging Discrimination in Mainstream Media. The latter was a community development course based on Karla’s latest book, Redressing Everyday Discrimination. The weakness and potential of anti-discrimination law (Routledge 2016).
Karla has a range of academic publications in English and in Spanish in themes of equality, discrimination, media (mis)representations and hate speech. She has also authored and co-authored various research reports and guides for public and third sector organisations.
Karla’s research interests include: structural discrimination, intersectionality, identity politics, multidimensional theories of justice, social movements, freedom of expression, hate speech, hate crime, critical, feminist, and socio-legal approaches, coproduction and action research.