Baroness Lola Young

Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey is a British crossbench peer, actress, academic and campaigner whose public identity sits at the intersection of the arts, cultural policy, higher education, and human-rights legislation. Raised in North London in foster care and later in children's homes in Islington, she trained in drama, worked professionally as an actress and BBC/ITV presenter (Metal Mickey, Play School), then moved into academia as Professor and later Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies at Middlesex University. She was created a crossbench life peer in 2004 and became a defining voice in the UK's modern-slavery legislative record, starting with her 2009 work on forced-labour amendments and the Rana Plaza disaster response in 2013. She is Chancellor of the University of Nottingham (2020, ), Co-Chair of the Foundation for Future London, Patron of Anti-Slavery International, and a non-executive director of Bloomsbury Publishing.