Parosha Chandran is Professor of Practice in Modern Slavery Law at The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London. She is Module leader of the LLM course, “The Law and Practice of Modern Slavery”.

Professor Chandran is a multi-award-winning human rights barrister and a world-leading, internationally renowned authority on the law relating to human trafficking, modern slavery, servitude and forced labour. With almost three decades of specialist legal practice, she has built a globally-influential body of work dedicated to securing justice for victims of severe human rights violations and to advancing legal accountability at domestic, regional and international levels. Her career uniquely combines precedent-setting litigation, high-level legal advisory work for States and international institutions, influential scholarship, and postgraduate teaching at the forefront of global legal developments in modern slavery law.

As a practising barrister at One Pump Court Chambers, London, Professor Chandran has represented victims of trafficking and exploitation in some of the most significant human rights cases of the modern era. Her litigation has generated a wealth of authoritative jurisprudence across asylum law, criminal justice, non-punishment protection, sexual and child exploitation, slavery, servitude and forced labour, compensation claims, and State responsibility for failures to identify, protect and safeguard victims. These cases have helped to develop and shape the legal understanding of coercion, vulnerability and consent in modern slavery and trafficking contexts and have materially strengthened victims’ rights across multiple jurisdictions.

She occupies a singular position in international human rights law as the only lawyer acting for victims of trafficking to have secured three unanimous judgments of the European Court of Human Rights against three different States (V.C.L. and A.N. v United Kingdom, 2021; T.V. v Spain, 2024; B.B. v Slovakia, 2024). Collectively, these landmark rulings have established globally influential principles on victim identification, investigative duties, non-punishment, and the irrelevance of consent in conditions of trafficking and exploitation. V.C.L. and A.N. v United Kingdom established the European Court of Human Rights’ leading authority on the non-punishment of trafficking victims, now relied upon internationally by courts, lawyers, prosecutors, law-enforcement authorities and policymakers.

Professor Chandran’s role in shaping international law and legal standards includes influencing the development of international law through her advisory and representative work for global institutions. Acting as Counsel on behalf of the UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, she contributed to the UK Supreme Court’s 2022 judgment in Basfar v Wong which recognised, for the first time worldwide, the right of a trafficked migrant domestic worker to bring a civil compensation claim against a serving diplomat. This decision has had profound implications for diplomatic immunity, access to justice and accountability for human trafficking abuses.

Her advisory work is equally extensive and influential. She has provided high-level legal advice to the United Nations, the Council of Europe, national governments, Parliaments and international organisations on the design, interpretation and implementation of trafficking and modern slavery legislation. In the United Kingdom, she advised the British Parliament during the passage of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, contributing expert analysis on numerous aspects of victim protection and legal safeguards. Internationally, she has advised on the laws and policies of dozens of States and has delivered presentations and specialist training to judges, prosecutors, law-enforcement officials, parliamentarians, lawyers and civil society organisations across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Australasia and the Americas. 

Professor Chandran’s scholarly contributions are foundational to the field. She is the General Editor and co-author of The Human Trafficking Handbook (LexisNexis, 2011), the world’s first multidisciplinary textbook on combating human trafficking, widely cited by academics, practitioners and policymakers and recognised for its contribution to shaping the contours of modern slavery law and practice. She is also a co-author of the Council of Europe’s comprehensive HELP e-learning course on Combating Trafficking in Human Beings which provides extensive training for legal professionals across its 46 Member States (2017; revised 2024 edition). Her authorship of the Model Law on Orphanage Trafficking (Lumos, 2021) has helped define and address an emerging form of child exploitation, and she serves as a member of the Interparliamentary Taskforce on Human Trafficking’s expert working group on orphanage trafficking.

Her research and policy influence extends to a wide range of international publications and guidance, including contributions for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, UNODC, the OSCE and other global bodies. She has also provided sustained legislative and capacity-building support to Commonwealth parliamentarians through initiatives supported by the UK Parliament’s Modern Slavery Project.

In recognition of her exceptional impact, Professor Chandran has received numerous prestigious honours, including the United States Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Hero Award (2015), conferred by the Obama Administration for her “unparalleled legal representation of victims of modern slavery” and her role in establishing the rule of law for trafficking victims. In 2008 she received the UK’s Barrister of the Year Award for her precedent-setting cases and work in her fields.

Alongside her core work on trafficking and modern slavery, Professor Chandran is recognised for her specialist expertise at the intersection of sport and human rights. She is an expert adviser on sports trafficking and has contributed to global research and policy addressing the exploitation of children and vulnerable athletes in international sport. Between 2022 and 2025, she chaired and contributed to high-level international meetings on these issues, including at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, in Geneva, and in the Middle East.

At King’s College London, Professor Chandran brings this unparalleled depth of legal practice and global engagement into the classroom. Her teaching is informed directly by her litigation, advisory and law-reform work, offering postgraduate students a rare opportunity to engage critically with the law of modern slavery as it is applied, contested and developed at the highest domestic and international judicial and policy levels. Across all aspects of her work, she remains deeply committed to providing legal education, to supporting civil society organisations and to advancing effective, victim-centred responses to modern slavery and human trafficking worldwide.