Professor Stavros Brekoulakis, LLB (Athens) LLM (London) PhD (London)
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Professor of International Arbitration and Commercial Law
Email: s.brekoulakis@qmul.ac.uk
Room Number: Lincoln's Inn Fields
Profile
Professor Stavros Brekoulakis' CV [PDF 228KB]
Stavros Brekoulakis is a Professor and the Director of the School of International Arbitration at Queen Mary University of London; Brekoulakis also practices as an arbitrator at 3 Verulam Buildings (Gray’s Inn).
He teaches courses in International Commercial Arbitration, International Investment law and Arbitration, International Construction Contracts and Arbitration, International Commercial Litigation and Conflict of Laws, and International Commercial Law.
Brekoulakis is widely recognised as a leading authority in the field of international arbitration and has been invited to give the 2026 Summer Course on Private International Law at the Hague Academy of International Law.
He is regularly listed in Who’s Who Legal: Arbitration and Who’s Who Legal: Arbitration Thought Leader, being praised as “a powerhouse in international arbitration” with “a seemingly encyclopaedic recall of jurisprudence”; “a reigning thought leader in the arbitration space”, “one of the great minds in the international arbitration world”.
In 2020, Brekoulakis received the Global Arbitration Review Award for Best Public Lecture for his Roebuck Arbitration Lecture on “The Policy Favouring Arbitration Under English Law”.
His academic work includes the leading books on Third Parties in International Arbitration (OUP 2010), Arbitrability (Kluwer 2008), Third Party Funding in International Arbitration (report commissioned by the International Council of Commercial Arbitration 2018) and numerous articles in leading law journals and reviews, including the Modern Law Review, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Fordham International Law Journal, Pennsylvania State Law Review, Journal of International Dispute Settlement, American Review of International Arbitration, Journal of International Arbitration.
Brekoulakis is currently leading a major empirical and interdisciplinary (law, psychology, and politics) project on Impartiality in Arbitral Decision Making; working on a book on The Policies of English Arbitration Law (OUP forthcoming); working on an edited volume on International Commercial Courts (CUP forthcoming); and participates in the long-term Comparative Law and Procedure Project of the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg.
His academic work is widely cited both by peers and with approval by international tribunals and national courts in several jurisdictions, including the Privy Council, the High Court of England and Wales, the US Southern District of New York, and the India Supreme Court.
Brekoulakis has strong experience in senior administrative positions in academia being the Director of Graduate Studies and the Co-Director of Research of Queen Mary School of Law for several years, leading the School’s 2021 REF submission.
Outside academia, has led important policy projects and advised a wide number of governmental, intergovernmental, and non-governmental organisations, including being the Co-Chair of the International Council of Commercial Arbitration Task Force on Third Party Funding, a member of the Investment Expert Trade Advisory Group of the UK Department for International Trade and a member of the Steering Committee of the UNCITRAL Academic Forum on Investor-State Dispute Settlement. He serves in several public positions and commissions of trust including being a member of the governing body of the London Court of International Arbitration, a member of the Commission on Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce, a member of the Academic Council of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration, and an Assistant Rapporteur in the International Law Association Committee of International Commercial Arbitration.
He is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Arbitration, Mediation and Dispute Management; the General Editor of the Journal of International Dispute Settlement; the Co-editor of Kluwer’s International Arbitration Law Library series; a member of the Editorial Board of the Arbitration International; and a member of the Editorial Board of the International Chamber of Commerce Bulleting on International Arbitration.
He has been a visiting professor at Vienna University, Geneva University, National University of Singapore, New York University (NYU) and Athens University.
Brekoulakis is a popular speaker and invited to speak in several academic conferences and professional events annually. He has organised and co-organised many leading academic conferences in his academic career.
Brekoulakis practices law as an arbitrator at 3 Verulam Buildings (Gray’s Inn) and has been appointed in more than 60 international investment and commercial arbitrations, as chairman, sole arbitrator, and co-arbitrator under the rules of all major international arbitration institutions. Find out more about his arbitration work and experience.