Through cutting-edge research across all aspects of commercial law, our academics bring their teaching to life. You’ll be guided by leaders in the field who tackle some of the most complex and evolving issues in commercial law - from sovereign debt to AI patents – and shape the debate around these topics.
Rodrigo Olivares-Caminal is a Professor in Banking and Finance Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS) at Queen Mary University of London. Prior to joining CCLS he was a Senior Lecturer in Financial Law and the Academic Director at the Centre for Financial and Management Studies (SOAS), University of London and the School of Law, University of Warwick. He taught in undergraduate and postgraduate courses in various Schools of Law and Business Schools in the United Kingdom, Spain, Greece, France and Argentina as well as in professional training courses in Africa, Asia and Europe.
He has acted as a Sovereign Debt Expert for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Senior Insolvency Expert for the World Bank / IFC and as a consultant to several multilateral institutions in Washington DC and Europe, Central Banks and Sovereign States as well as in several international transactions with Law Firms.
He is the author/editor of seven books and has extensively published in peer-reviewed journals. He sits in the editorial/advisory board of several law journals in the UK and US and is a member of national and international institutions and associations specialised in comparative commercial and insolvency law.
Rodrigo's research focuses on international finance and insolvency. Within these areas, he is an expert on crises and debt restructuring, including distress situations. In this capacity he has led research projects for multilateral organizations and central banks and has assisted corporations, banks and their creditors. Moreover, he is currently conducting an analysis of the effectiveness and extensiveness of the insolvency laws in the 38 economies of operations of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). This complements the work that he has previously done for the World Bank as a Senior Insolvency Expert.
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Professor Dr Rosa María Lastra is the Sir John Lubbock Chair in Banking Law and Chair of the Institute of Banking and Finance Law at CCLS. She is Co-Director of the Sovereign Debt Forum and principal Investigator Legal and Economic Conceptions of Money.
She is a member of the Monetary Committee of the International Law Association (MOCOMILA), founding member of the European Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (ESFRC), research associate of the Financial Markets Group of the London School of Economics and Political Science, member of the European Banking Institute (EBI) and member of the European Law Institute (ELI).
Rosa has served as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, United Nations (UNCTAD) and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. From November 2008 to June 2009 she acted as Specialist Adviser to the European Union Committee [Sub-Committee A] of the House of Lords regarding its Inquiry into EU Financial Regulation and responses to the financial crisis. She is a member of two expert panels of the European Parliament: the Monetary Panel since 2015 and the Banking Union (Resolution) Panel since 2016. She has contributed as expert witness in international arbitration cases.
Prior to coming to London, she was Assistant Professor of International Banking at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs in New York (1993-1996). From January 1992 to September 1993 she was a consultant in the Legal Department of the International Monetary Fund in Washington D.C. From 2008 to 2010 she was a Visiting Professor of the University of Stockholm. She studied at Valladolid University, Madrid University, London School of Economics and Political Science and Harvard Law School (Fulbright Fellow).
She is a renowned expert in the areas of central banking, banking supervision and resolution, financial regulation, EU monetary and financial law, financial crisis management, and international monetary law.
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Christopher Millard is Professor of Privacy and Information Law and head of the Cloud Legal Project. He is also a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute and is Of Counsel to the law firm Bristows. He has over 30 years of experience in technology law, both in academia and legal practice.
His first book, Legal Protection of Computer Programs and Data (Sweet & Maxwell, 1985) was one of the earliest international comparative law works in the field and he has since published widely on legal and regulatory issues relating to information technology, communications, privacy, e-commerce, and Internet law. Since 2008 his main research focus has been cloud computing. He is co-author of Cloud Computing Law (Oxford University Press, 2013) and is a founding editor of the International Journal of Law and IT and of International Data Privacy Law.
Christopher is a Fellow and former Chairman of the Society for Computers & Law, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a past-President of the International Federation of Computer Law Associations, and a past-Chair of the Technology Law Committee of the International Bar Association. He was a member of the OECD’s Steering Group on Contractual Solutions for Transborder Data Flows (2000-01) and since 2002 he has been a member of the International Chamber of Commerce’s Task Force on Privacy and Personal Data Protection.
Christopher’s current research interests are cloud computing law and regulation, privacy and information law, and the legal implications of emerging technologies. He has led the Cloud Legal Project since it was established in 2009 and has been Joint Director (with Prof Jon Crowcroft of the University of Cambridge) of the Microsoft Cloud Computing Research Centre since its launch in 2014. He is also a principal investigator on the EU-funded Cloud Accountability Project - A4Cloud (2012-2016).
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Chris Reed is a member of the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS). He joined the Centre in 1987 and is responsible for the University of London LLM courses in Information Technology Law, Internet Law, Electronic Banking Law and Telecommunications Law.
Chris has published widely on many aspects of computer law and research in which he was involved led to the EU directives on electronic signatures and on electronic commerce. From 1997-2000, Chris was Joint Chairman of the Society for Computers and Law, and in 1997-8 he acted as Specialist Adviser to the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology.
Chris participated as an Expert at the European Commission/Danish Government Copenhagen Hearing on Digital Signatures, represented the UK Government at the Hague Conference on Private International Law and has been an invited speaker at OECD and G8 international conferences. He is a former Director of CCLS, and from 2004 to 2009 was Academic Dean of the Faculty of Law & Social Sciences.
In terms of research focus, Chris specialises in artificial intelligence – responsibility, liability and regulation, cloud computing, theories of regulation in cyberspace, cross-border regulation of online activities, electronic signatures, online banking and financial services, and all aspects of electronic commerce.
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Dr Ian Walden is Professor of Information and Communications Law and Director of the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London.
His publications include Media Law and Practice (2009), Free and Open Source Software (2013), Computer Crimes and Digital Investigations (2nd ed., 2016) and Telecommunications Law and Regulation (5th ed., 2018).
Ian has been a Visiting Professor at the universities of Texas, Melbourne and KU Leuven. Ian has been involved in law reform projects for the World Bank, European Commission, Council of Europe, Commonwealth and UNCTAD, as well as numerous individual states. Ian was a ‘expert nationaux détaché’ to the European Commission (1995-96); Board Member and Trustee of the Internet Watch Foundation (2004-09); on the Executive Board of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (2010-12); the Press Complaints Commission (2009-14), a member of the RUSI Independent Surveillance Review (2014-15) and a member of the Code Adjudication Panel at the Phone-paid Services Authority (2016- ). Ian is a member of the Commission’s Expert Group to support the application of the GDPR. Ian is a solicitor and Of Counsel to Baker McKenzie.
Ian’s current research interests are cybercrime and cross-border access to electronic evidence, communications law, media regulation and free and open source software.
He leads Queen Mary’s qLegal initiative, which is part of the iLINC network, which has been funded from the European Commission as a FP7 project and from the Higher Education Innovation Fund.
Ian is a principal investigator on the Cloud Legal Project, funded by Microsoft, and a joint research initiative with Cambridge Computing Lab, the Microsoft Cloud Computing Research Centre.
He also prepared the report ‘Legal and Regulatory Implications of Disruptive Technologies in Emerging Market Economies’ (2018) for the World Bank Legal Department’s Thematic Working Group on Technology and Innovation in Development.
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Professor Duncan Matthews is a leading expert on intellectual property and Director of the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute and a member of the Centre for Commercial Law Studies. He has held academic positions as a lecturer in law at the University of Warwick and as a research fellow at the ESRC Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, also at the University of Warwick. He has worked as a researcher at a policy think-tank (the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, London) and as an EU lobbyist.
He has acted as an advisor to: Directorate General Trade of the European Commission; the ECAP II EC-ASEAN Intellectual Property Rights Co-operation Programme; the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); the European Parliament Committee on International Trade; the European Patent Office (EPO); the UK Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy (SABIP); and the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) Expert Advisory Group on Trade and Development.
In recent months, Professor Matthews has made several media appearances where he has discussed the wide-ranging legal implications of the Covid-19 pandemic. Of his research, he describes it as sitting "at the interface between the patent system and access, focusing on the actual or potential consequences of patents in fields such as access to HIV/AIDS drugs, access to Covid-19 vaccines and access to genome editing techniques that in the future could eradicate hereditary diseases in unborn children.”
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Dr Noam Shemtov joined CCLS in September 2009 as a lecturer in Intellectual Property and Technology Law. He is currently a Reader in IP and Technology Law and Deputy Head of CCLS. He lectures in areas of intellectual property, creative industries and technology and his research interests are also focused in these fields.
Noam has led research projects and studies funded by UK Research Councils and by industry, national, supranational and commercial organizations, such as CreativeWorks London, CISAC, Microsoft, WIPO, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and UK’s Department for International Development (DFID). He is currently leading a project for DFID/FCO on the Establishment and Operation of a Specialised IP Court in Ukraine.
Noam also holds visiting appointments by Spanish and Dutch universities, where he lectures regularly in areas pertaining to intellectual property, creative industries and technology. He is a qualified solicitor both in the UK and in Israel.
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