Carina Risvig Hansen (April - June 2010) 

Carina Risvig Hansen is a PhD student at Copenhagen Business School and is visiting Nottingham as a part of the Asia Link program. She has a degree in Law from the University of Aarhus from 2006 and is currently working on a PhD Thesis with the title: “ Public contracts that are not covered – or fully covered - by the Public Procurement Directive”,  which is due to be completed in October 2012. Carina is also working part time for the Danish Competition Authority (which is the Authority responsible for public procurement legislation in Denmark).

The overall aim of her PhD thesis is to analyze what rules apply for contracting authorities when awarding a contract that are not covered or fully covered by the Public Procurement Directives. The project focuses on contracts of a value that falls below the thresholds of the Public Procurement Directive, contracts that are listed in Annex II B of the Directive and contracts regarding service concessions.  Her thesis will furthermore look at the enforcement rules and remedies regarding the above three types of contracts.

During her time in Nottingham she expects to collect materials for her thesis, write chapters on the definitions of the three aforementioned types of procurement contracts, and to share experiences and thoughts with members of the PPRG.

 

Andrea Sundstrand (April 2010)

Andrea Sundstrand is a lecturer in the Faculty of Law, Stockholm University, Sweden, where she is presently pursuing a PhD. She holds an LLM degree from Uppsala University in Sweden. She is  a member of the Swedish Bar Association and has previously worked eleven years as a senior legal advisor at the Swedish surveillance authority for public procurement. She has also published two books on public procurement and started a Swedish public procurement network for lawyers with over 240 participants.

Andrea is researching public procurement outside the EU Directives, such as concessions, part B services and  below thresholds procurement. Her research includes the questions on what procurements are excluded from the EU Directives, in what legislatory framework these excluded procurements would be regulated and what the obligations are for procurements regulated only by the EU Treaties. The research also includes examining whether Sweden has managed to regulate these excluded procurements properly.

During her stay at Nottingham, Andrea is looking further into the definition and meaning of the term "certain crossborder interest", stated by the EU Court in its jurisprudence. By stating that some procurements falling outside the EU legislatory framework may have a certain crossborder interest, the EU Court has implied that these procurements could be caught by the articles of the EU Treaties and the basic principles of EU law.

Fred Kan (February - March 2010)

Fred Kan is visiting the PPRG during February and March of 2010.  Over the years Fred has held a number of prestigious positions such as Deputy Chairman of the Hong Kong Review Body on Bid Challenges (under the WTO Government Procurement Agreement), Council Member of the Law Society of Hong Kong from 1997 to 2002, Chairman of its External Affairs Standing Committee, Council Member of the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre, Member of the Macau Law Reform Advisory Committee, Hon. Legal Advisor to the Hong Kong Institute of Planners to name but a few.

During his stay at Nottingham Fred will be reading and researching into the monitoring mechanisms established in major member-states of the GPA and the problems and challenges confronting China upon its accession to the GPA.

Ximena Lazo Vitoria (October 2009)

Ximena Lazo Vitoria is a Professor of Administrative Law at the University of Alcalá in Spain.  She came  to Nottingham specifically to do research on a comparative project on competitive dialogue that aims to compare the approaches of Spain, the UK and other countries.  Spain's regulation of competitive dialogue is quite general and leaves various aspects of the procedure unsolved; despite this, contracting authorities are using it regularly.  The comparative analysis will hopefully provide some criteria necessary to guide the authorities in their use of the procedure.

 

Mari Ann Simovart (September 2009)

Mari Ann Simovart is a lecturer in Faculty of Law, University of Tartu, Estonia, where she is also pursuing a PhD.  She holds an LLM degree from Duke Univeristy in the United States and is a member of the Estonian Bar Association.

She is currently researching the influence of general principles of the EC procurement law upon application of contract law to procurement contracts; incl balancing of fundamental principles of EC procurement law and general contract law; inclusion of social policies in, amendments to and termination of procurement contracts.

In Nottingham, she studied legislative solutions of different Member States to regulate procurement contracts in view of the above mentioned issues (amendment, termination and social policies); and looked  into the options of contracting authority’s discretion in preparing contract conditions versus pre-prepared, officially approved (or confirmed by the law) contract terms.

Her trip was financed by European Social Fund and Archimedes Foundation.

Vera Eiró (February - April 2009)

Vera Eiró is a PhD student at the Nova University of Lisbon's School of Law (Portugal) and will be visiting the PPRG until the end of April 2009.  She has a degree in Law (Nova University) and post-graduate studies in Environmental and Planning Law (University of Coimbra School of Law).

Vera has been a trainee and an associate at Linklaters LLP (Lisbon Office, Public Law) and has recently worked in the Portuguese Constitutional Court as an assistant to a Judge.

Vera's PhD subject is damages under Public Procurement Remedies Directives. During her visit she expects to collect materials to her thesis, to write the main thesis chapters regarding EU Public Procurement Law and to share experiences with the other PPLRG members.

Vera received a scholarship from the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (through FCT) that funds her PhD studies and that covers her expenses while staying in Nottingham.

 

Dr. Su Miaohan (January - March 2009)

Dr. Su Miaohan, lecturer in the Law School of the Central University of Finance and Economy (China), is visiting the University in 2009 as part of the Asia Link programme.

He has a PhD in administrative law from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (2008). He has worked with the Energy Law Drafting Group in the Chinese government since 2006, and his PhD thesis is entitled "Regulatory System of the Energy Industry in China".

During his visit to Nottingham, he will attend classes and collect materials with the aim to develop a module on Public Procurement Law back in his own university in China. He is also interested in difficulties arising from energy and environmental considerations in public procurement policy.

Previous Visiting Scholars

In 2005/6, Erik Marskner, from Germany, spent several months with the Group researching the legal nature of the contract award decision from a comparative perspective, and Phoebe Bolton, lecturer at the University of the Western Cape, also spent a short period at the School working on material for her forthcoming book on public procurement in South Africa.

In 2007, the Group has had two visiting scholars:Francis Ssennoga (March) and Azahari Abdul Aziz (August-October).

In January-May 2008, Grith Ølykke spent time in Nottingham as part of the Asia Link visitor programme. Dr. Anna Gorczynska visited Nottingham for a week in September 2008 as part of the Asia Link programme.

Professor José Pernas García visited Nottingham for a month in November/December 2008 to do research in in-house procurement regulation.

Professor José Pernas García 

 

 José Pernas García, professor of administrative law of the University of Coruña (Spain), visited the School of Law of the University of Nottingham during december 2008.

He has a PhD in administrative law from the University of Coruña (2003). His mains areas of research are environmental law and public procurement. Recently he has published a book in Spain about in-house providing and the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union (“Las operaciones in house y el Derecho comunitario de contratos públicos”, Iustel, Madrid, 2008).

During his visit to the University of Nottingham he collected and analyzed materials on in-house procurement in the European Union and in the English system specifically to finish an article about this subject. He was interested also in examining how to deal with environmental issues in public procurement from a comparative point of view.

 

Dr. Anna Gorczynska (September 2008)

Dr. Anna Gorczysnka, lecturer in the Department of European Law at the University of Lodz, visited the University for one week in September 2008.  She is the author of a PhD entitled "Public Procurement in the European Community: Issues of Substantive Law".  Her main research interests are European and Polish public procurement law, public-private partnership (PPP) regulation, and the regulation of structural funds.

She gives lectures at the undergraduate, postgraduate and professional level in the field of public procurement and European commercial law.  In 2006, she was promoted to Head of Postgraduate Studies on EU structural funds.  In the past 8 years, Dr. Gorczynska has also been working for the Office of the President of the Lodz Region as Head of the International Cooperation Unit.  Most recently, in 2008, she has become the national coordinator for the ERA-ARD programme.

Her current research involves an analysis of the laws regulating public-private partnerships, and specifically, how the competitive dialogue procedure can work for these.

Grith Ølykke (January - May 2008)

 Grith Ølykke, PhD student at the Copenhagen Business School, visited the University until the 1st of May.  She has a Master of Science in Commercial Law and Business Administration from Copenhagen Business School and is currently working on a project entitled "Liberalisation of the public welfare service 'passenger transport by railway' in Denmark", which is due to be completed in March 2010. 

She received a scholarship from the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation to cover her expenses while staying in Nottingham.

 

Azahari Abdul Aziz, (August - October 2007)

Azahari Abdul Aziz, Senior Law Lecturer at the MARA University of Technology, will be visiting the University for three months from August 2007 under the PPRG’s Visiting Scholars’ scheme. He has been teaching law at the MARA University of Technology since 1990. He is currently working on a PhD entitled “The Future of Secondary Policies in Government Procurement in ASEAN Countries” under the supervision of Prof Dr Rahmat Mohamad (Deputy Vice-Chancellor of UiTM) – who is a former PhD student of Professor Sue Arrowsmith, Director of the PPRG. At the same time he is also writing a book on Government Procurement under the WTO in Bahasa Malaysia, which is expected to be published early in 2008.

During his visit to the University of Nottingham he will be collecting and analyzing materials on international procurement for the purposes of both his thesis and the book.

Francis Ssennoga (March 2007)

Francis Ssennoga is currently a Lecturer of International Sourcing and Public Procurement at Kyambogo University. Kyambogo University is the second biggest University in Uganda. It is one of the four Public Universities in the country.

Francis is undertaking Doctoral studies at the University of Twente, Netherlands on the integration of developing countries into the international trade regimes on public procurement. He holds a Master of Philosophy with a bias in Procurement and Supply Chain Management from Maastricht School of Management, Netherlands. He also holds a Master of Business Administration from Uganda Martyrs University.  For his first, Degree Francis did a Bachelor of Education Degree from Makerere University specialising in accounting, Management and Economics. Earlier he had acquired a diploma in Education.

Francis is a Director of Profima Consult, a consultancy firm incorporated in Uganda in 2006 to handle procurement, management and finance services. Francis is also a Managing Partner of Frachel consult, a consultancy firm with head offices in Uganda specialising in Accounting, Management and Civil works.

Francis is a co-founder and Deputy Project manager of Education Development Initiative (EDI) a Non Governmental Organisation aimed at enhancing Vocational Education in Uganda and equipping the massive number of Universal Primary Education (UPE) graduates with employable skills for self-sustenance.