Research Areas

The School considers its strengths in Competition Law, Commercial and Media, Information Technology and Intellectual Property law to be particularly important, but aims to reach out beyond the Law School in these areas as can be seen below, and beyond. Recently, therefore we started a general initiative in order to foster collaboration between all UEA academics interested in Law, Justice and Regulation (view the member list).

The School nurtures its research talent wherever it can and aims to support all members of staff who wish to develop a research career, including those appointed to contracts with no research obligation.

Company and Commercial Law

The School's research in this area is concentrated in the empirical study of shareholder behaviour and corporate governance, alongside research into equity and debt finance, including personal property security law and insolvency. We also have expertise in sales, carriage of goods by sea, and banking law. For more information on members' research and teaching, see their personal pages.

Research-Active Staff: Professor Alastair Mullis (International Sales); Professor Duncan Sheehan (Personal Property Law); Dr Rob Heywood, Ms Dionysia Katelouzou, Ms Viviana Mollica (Company Law); Mr Edward Guntrip (International Investment Law); Dr Emily Laidlaw (Corporate Social Responsibility)

Competition Law

Competition law research in the School spans several areas – from cartels, to abuse of dominance and private enforcement of competition law; it is focused on the ESRC funded Centre for Competition Policy which was set up with Core Centre Funding in 2004. Research is multi-disciplinary with members of the Centre looking at legal problems through the lens of economic and political science perspectives.

Research-Active Staff: Professor Morten Hviid (competition law and economics); Professor Chris Wadlow (unfair competition); Dr Pinar Akman (abuse of dominance); Dr Michael Harker (media regulation and competition law); Dr Andreas Stephan, Dr Peter Whelan (cartels).

For more information please visit the CCP webpages.

Media, Information Technology and Intellectual Property Law

In 2012, in collaboration with other Universities and Schools within the University, such as Economics the Law School was awarded a four year AHRC/EPSRC/ESRC Centre on copyright and new business models. The centre is called the Centre for Creativity, Enterprise Regulation and Technology or CREATe.  Please refer to the Centre website for details of the Centre's research and UEA's role within it. However, the School's media IP and IT-related research spans a much wider field than merely the Centre itself.

Research-Active Staff: Professor Chris Wadlow (intellectual property law), Professor Alastair Mullis (privacy and defamation), Dr Michael Hamilton (free speech), Dr Paul Bernal (information technology law), Dr Emily Laidlaw (internet regulation; privacy and freedom of expression) Dr Michael Harker (media regulation); Karen McCullagh (data protection, privacy and social media), Mr Nick Scharf (copyright and digital music).

For more information on media-related research and media law research at UEA generally please visit the media@uea webpages

Additional research areas

The School is active in research in criminal law and criminal procedure and evidence (Professor Rosemary Pattenden, Dr Ian Edwards); it has expertise in contract, tort and restitution generally and from a comparative perspective (Dr Stathis Banakas, Professor Alastair Mullis, Professor Duncan Sheehan, Dr Gareth Spark); it engages in research in medical law (Dr Rob Heywood), and in Chancery subjects, including from a comparative perspective, primarily examining the Scots law (Professor Duncan Sheehan, Dr Gareth Spark, Dr Lu Xu).