The First Postgraduate Law Conference of the Centre for Private International Law

The Centre for Private International Law (CPIL) of the University of Aberdeen is pleased to host its first postgraduate conference, which is to be held on 17 November 2xz021. The Postgraduate Law Conference aims to bring together early career scholars working in the private international law field or at the intersection of European Union law and private international law. The purpose is for scholars to present their research before esteemed peers with relevant expertise and also to receive valuable feedback for further development from academic experts.

Call for papers

The Centre welcomes submissions by current postgraduate law students (LLM, PhD) and recent* LLM or PhD graduates who have not yet undertaken postdoctoral studies. The thematic areas of this conference will be centred around European Union Law, International Family Law, Transnational Commercial Law, and Dispute Resolution, with a particular focus on how these fields are shaped by Private International Law. Each panel topic will feature up to 4 speakers, and each panel will be allocated a combined total of 1 hour 20 minutes of presentation time and 40 minutes of Q&A. The acceptance of abstracts will depend on the relevance of the issues raised by the conference panels and the originality of research. The selected panellists will be offered the possibility to publish their paper in a special issue of the Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiation, but this is subject to editorial and peer review.

*Only those applicants who finished their LLM or PhD studies in the past two years prior to the day of the conference will be eligible to participate.

Topics for submissions

The Brussels IIa Recast and challenges posed by Brexit,
The rights of same-sex couples in the cross-border context post-Brexit,
The Hague Children’s Conventions,
Regulating non-traditional family structures, including cross-border surrogacy and the Verona Principles,
ADR in the context of international family law,
Investment arbitration procedure: jurisdiction, applicable law, bifurcation, appeals procedure, enforcement,
Overriding mandatory rules and public policy in international commercial arbitration,
Arbitrating art disputes,
Arbitrating IP disputes,
Competition law and arbitration,
Jurisdictional issues around cryptocurrency and blockchain,
UN Conventions Commentary,
EU Insolvency Regulation Recast,
Contemporary challenges in EU governance,
Rule of Law backsliding in the European Union,
The use of SLAPPs in the EU context,
The challenges posed by citizenship by investment at the EU level,
PIL issues arising from Brexit.

Please note that this is not an exhaustive list of topics. There will be a thematic panel division in the conference, but you are welcome to submit on any topic of your interest as long as it falls under one of the main areas: European Union Law, International Family Law, Transnational Commercial Law, and Dispute Resolution, and it addresses the interrelation with Private International Law.

Guest experts

Dr. Graham Butler, Aarhus University