Other research activities of fellows

Fellows of the Centre are engaged in a variety of external expert groups and law reform projects.  Each of the fellows also researches on a range of commercial law topics, and has work in progress in the form of books, journal articles and conference papers.   

The research projects associated with the Commercial Law Centre are listed separately here.  Work which has been completed is listed separately here.

Professor Louise Gullifer

• Academic lead (Oxford University), Cape Town Convention Academic Project
• Executive Director, Secured Transactions Law Reform Project
• Academic lead (Oxford University) on a comparative analysis of the reform of personal property security law in Australia and the United Kingdom (jointly with Professors Paul Ali and Ian Ramsay of Melbourne Law School)
• English representative on the project: Modernisation of the law of secured transactions in Spain to promote access to credit in an international context (funded by the Spanish government).
• UK delegate to UNCITRAL Working Group VI (Model Law on secured transactions)

Professor Hugh Beale

• Researcher on the Secured Transactions Law Reform Project
• Former member of the Expert Group convened by the European Commission to advise on the draft of the proposed Common European Sales Law. The proposal made in October 2011 has been withdrawn by the Commission but with a view to a new proposal in order to “fully unleash the potential of e-commerce in the digital single market". Hugh is currently working on the implications of this for the content of any revised proposal.

Professor Paul Davies

• Member of the European Corporate Law Experts.  The ECLE is an independent and not-for profit group of fourteen company lawyers from a range EU countries dedicated to publishing policy papers on selected topics of European company law.
• Paul has recently presented on company and banking law topics at the University of Leuven, National University of Singapore (twice) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Professor Jeffrey Wool

• Condon-Falknor Professor of global business law at the University of Washington School of Law
• Executive Director, Cape Town Convention Academic Project
• Professor Wool is running three research projects which are being undertaken wholly or jointly under the auspices of the Commercial Law Centre:
  • Best Practices in the Field of Electronic Registry Design and Operation
  • Comparative Commercial Law project
  • Economic Assessment of International Commercial Law Reform

Dr Isabel Ruiz

• Co-investigator of the project: The Labor Market Impacts of Forced Migration (LAMFOR) and leading two papers. (www.econforced.com)
• Study on the impacts of crime and corruption on foreign direct investment to Latin America.  The analysis focuses on the differential impact on main sectors of the economy and in the interplay between crime and institutions, jointly with Luisa Blanco (Pepperdine University), Prof Charlie Sawyer (Texas Christian University) and Rossitza Wooster (Portland State University).
• Member of the Editorial Board of the Hispanic Economic Outlook, a publication of the American Society of Hispanic Economists.
• Isabel is currently working on a paper on globalization and the labour market returns to international experience (jointly with Prof Susan Pozo).

Dr Kristin van Zwieten

• Reporter for the European Law Institute's three year project on business rescue law in Europe, with Prof. Bob Wessels (Leiden) and Prof Stephan Madaus (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg). This project has involved qualitative surveying of business rescue law and practice in 14 EU Member States, and will culminate in a report and recommendations in 2016.
• Co-investigator on a two-year ESRC funded project on law, finance and development in Brazil, Russia, India and China, with Prof John Armour (Oxford), and other colleagues from a number of universities. Kristin has carried out fieldwork and coding for the India component of this project.
• Consultant to the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy in New Delhi, which is advising the Indian Ministry of Finance and Reserve Bank of India on a range of insolvency law and debt enforcement law reform projects.
• Member of the Technical Committee of the Insolvency Lawyers' Association
• Kristin occasionally acts as a consultant to the World Bank Group on insolvency law reform matters.