Call for Paprs: 4th Early Career Scholars Conference – “Competition Law as a Guiding Discipline for Digital Economy”, 12-13 November 2026
Early Career Scholars Conference
“Competition Law as a Guiding Discipline for Digital Economy”
12-13 November 2026
Call for Abstracts
Submission deadline: 12 April 2026
The economic and technological developments of recent decades increasingly require multi-disciplinary assessment to support well-functioning markets and deliver societal benefits. Alongside maintaining a robust competitive process, such developments would benefit from a comprehensive approach, inter alia, to ensure effective consumer protection, overcome IP-related challenges, guarantee data/privacy protection, address labour-related problems, support industrial development and promote sustainability. While contemporary competition law frequently internalises these challenges, it can also play a broader role in addressing them by fostering and guiding effective multi-disciplinary approaches.
As a guiding discipline, competition law analysis can play three important roles for contemporary digital economies. First, it can act as a “signpost at the crossroads” by identifying market failures and/or market segments that require regulatory intervention. Next, where markets require multi-disciplinary solutions, it can complement other areas of law by providing an avenue for circumstance-tailored interventions. Finally, it can protect both market competition and related non-competition interests where other fields of law cannot reach, or additional regulation is considered counter-productive to beneficial market outcomes.
We invite early career scholars – PhD candidates, Postdoctoral Researchers, Assistant Professors and Early Career Professionals (PhD holders within 5 years after commencing a professional activity) – to consider competition law from the above-mentioned perspective, focusing on at least one of the following four topics:
- Competition law and public (non-competition) interests
- Competition law and digital/AI regulation
- Competition law and regulatory sandboxes
- Competition law and interdisciplinary toolbox
Submissions are welcome on any issue within the above-listed four broad topics, as long as they involve the analysis of competition law in correlation with at least one other area of law – including, but not limited to, digital/AI regulation, consumer protection law, IP law, data/privacy law, and labour law.
Submission Guidelines and Notification of Outcomes:
Prospective applicants are welcome to submit an anonymised abstract of no more than 500 words and a one-page CV (in a separate PDF document) to ECR-CLC-2026@glasgow.ac.uk by 12 April 2026.
Co-authorship is limited to two authors per submission.
Abstracts will be subject to a review process by the organising committee. Selected applicants will be informed by the end of April 2026.
Applicants whose abstracts have been selected for the conference will be expected to submit full-length papers (up to 12,000 words) by 1 September 2026.
