Our People
The University of Nottingham Commercial Law Centre (UNCLC) has a diverse and dynamic membership, providing a home for leaders in the field of commercial law.
UNCLC Co-Directors
Dr Sanam Saidova is an Assistant Professor and Co-Director of the University of Nottingham Commercial Law Centre. Dr Saidova specialises in English and international commercial and contract law. Her research and teaching interests lie in the law of contract, secured transactions, personal property, international trade finance and sale of goods.
One of Dr Saidova's particular area of expertise concerns the Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment. She has published extensively on this subject, including a monograph published by Hart Publishing in 2018. Dr Saidova is the Editor of English Sale of Goods Law, Lloyd’s Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly (LMCLQ) International Maritime and Commercial Law Yearbook (IMCLY).
Paul Torremans is Professor of Intellectual Property Law, and the Co-Director of the University of Nottingham Commercial Law Centre. His teaching focusses on patent and trade mark law, both at undergraduate and at postgraduate level, but his research interest also includes copyright and all other aspect of intellectual property rights. He has particular expertise when it comes to the interaction between intellectual property and private international law and between intellectual property and human rights. He is happy to supervise research projects in all these areas.
Academic members
Dr Dara Akanmidu is an Assistant Professor in Law. She holds a PhD in Law from Durham University and LLM (with distinction) from the University of Warwick. Dara’s research interests lie in the broad area of corporate law and corporate governance. She is however particularly interested in corporate accountability and enforcement of directors’ duties within the context of sub-Saharan Africa. Her monograph on enforcement of directors’ duties in sub-Saharan Africa is due to be published in December 2023.
Dr Reza Beheshti teaches and researches in the areas of international sales transactions, commercial conflict of laws, comparative contract law and international commercial arbitration. He is currently working on a monograph examining significant commercial buyers’ remedies provided by dominant international legal regimes, such as CISG and American Uniform Commercial Code.
He also acts as voluntary correspondent for UNCITRAL, in which capacity he provides abstracts on important cases governed by UNCITRAL Texts and decided by UK and Iranian Courts for UNCITRAL legal database (CLOUT).
Howard Bennett is Hind Professor of Commercial Law. His research concentrates mainly on shipping law and insurance law. He is the general editor and a contributing author of Carver on Charterparties (2017), the author of The Law of Marine Insurance (2nd ed, 2006), and a contributor to Benjamin’s Sale of Goods (10th ed, 2017) and Scrutton on Charterparties and Bills of Lading (23rd ed, 2015).
A broader interest in general commercial law is manifest in authorship of Principles of the Law of Agency (2013) and co-editorship of and contributions to Vulnerable Transactions in Corporate Insolvency (2003). He teaches contract law and maritime law.
Dr Oliver Butler is an Assistant Professor in the School of Law. His research interests include the development and regulation of automated decision-making technologies for application in the public sector and the impact of privacy and data protection laws on data sharing between public authorities and commercial actors.
Peter Cartwright is Professor of Consumer Protection Law and Deputy Head of School. His research is primarily in Consumer Protection Law and includes the monographs Consumer Protection and the Criminal Law (CUP) and Banks Consumers and Regulation (Hart). It has been funded by the ESRC, AHRC, Law Commission, and Financial Services Research Forum.
He sits on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Banking Regulation and the Journal of European Consumer and Market Law. He currently teaches Consumer and Marketing Law (undergraduate) and International Consumer Protection (postgraduate).
Estelle Derclaye is Professor of Intellectual Property Law. She teaches intellectual property law at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Her main areas of research are copyright and design rights in general, the legal protection of databases (especially the database sui generis right), IP overlaps, IP and climate change, and IP and well-being.
She researches at all levels i.e. international, EU and national (UK, US, France, Italy mainly). Her methods are doctrinal, comparative, empirical and interdisciplinary - especially economics and philosophy.
Jane Frecknall-Hughes is a Professor of Accounting and Taxation at Nottingham University Business School. A chartered accountant and chartered tax consultant, she holds an LLM in Commercial Law and a PhD in Revenue Law and Tax Practice and has previously held various chairs, including in Accounting, Law and Revenue Law, at The Open University, where she was also Head of the Law School. Jane's research focuses on taxation, especially from an interdisciplinary perspective.
She has gained an international reputation for her work in this area, which is reflected in her publication record. Jane currently teaches taxation, but has taught a wide range of subjects in the accounting and business law area, and her textbook, entitled The Theory, Principles and Management of Taxation: An Introduction, was published by Routledge in October 2014.
Dr Sandra Frisby is Associate Professor and Reader in Company and Commercial Law. Her main research interests lies in the area of Corporate Insolvency Law, with a focus on empirical work to illustrate how legal procedures and innovations operate in the real world and how insolvency law and insolvency practice interact in this respect. She is also interested in the relationship between commercial and property law and business practice generally. She teaches in the areas of corporate law and property law.
John Gathergood is Professor of Economics at the University of Nottingham. His research specialises in behavioural personal finance using data from lenders, financial aggregators, investment platforms and credit reference agencies. He has acted as academic advisor to the Bank of England, Financial Conduct Authority and Her Majesty's Treasury, as well as firms, industry bodies and the third sector.
Since 2014, he has advised the Financial Conduct Authority on the design of price caps for the payday lending and rent-to-own credit markets and is advising HM Treasury on third generation financial innovation.
The interests of Dr Nicholas Gervassis cover areas of information technology, intellectual property, law and society and corporate social responsibility. His interdisciplinary research platform explores law as a socially impactful technology itself, where modern life and culture become embedded in commercial, information-based digital communications environments. It focusses on online regulation, copyright and digital cultures, automated processes and cybernetics.
Richard Hyde is Professor of Law, Regulation and Governance. His teaching focuses on the law of obligations. His research interests focuses on food law and consumer law, and how the regulation in these areas impacts businesses. He is currently involved in a large project that uses eye-tracking to assess whether contracts comply with legal requirements, and the ways that this affects “prominence” and “transparency” of contractual clauses.
Jeff Kenner
Jeff Kenner is Professor of European Law. His research in the field of commercial law is twofold. First, employee involvement in companies, the case for harmonisation throughout the EU, eg: Kenner J., ‘Worker Involvement in the European Company (Societas Europaea): Towards a Europeanisation of Corporate Governance?’ [2005] Yearbook of European Law 223-259, and second, obligations of companies for violations of labour rights for which they can be held to be responsible, discussed in Kenner J., Peake K., et al, ‘The integration of EU development, trade and human rights policies’, FRAME Work Package No.9 Deliverable No.4 (European Commission FP7 Report, 30 September 2016).
Dr Kasim Khorasanee is a Teaching Associate whose teaching interests are predominantly in the areas of contract and company law. He is a qualified England & Wales solicitor (currently non-practising) and previously worked at a City law firm carrying out corporate transactional work, focused on the energy sector.
Dr Natalie Leesakul is an Assistant Professor in Law and Autonomous Systems. Her research focuses on understanding the adoption challenges and implications of emerging technologies, especially Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics, in order to responsibly develop innovative strategies to improve the implementation of technology into organizations and society. She has been involved in many research projects in collaboration with various universities over the years. Natalie holds an LLM in Innovation, Technology and the Law from the University of Edinburgh and a multidisciplinary PhD in Law and Robotics at the University of Nottingham. She teaches Cybercrime, Cybersecurity and Surveillance, Online Regulation and E-Commerce, and Law, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.
Dr Maria Augusta Paim is Assistant Professor in Environmental Law. Her work focuses on climate change strategies and sustainable transitions in the Global South, including environmental integrity in the energy sector and market-based mechanisms for forest governance.
Maria holds a PhD in Public International Law/International Law of the Sea (University of Sao Paulo) and an LLM in Maritime Law (University of Southampton, recipient of the British Council Chevening Award).
Thomas Papadogiannis Varouchakis
Thomas Papadogiannis Varouchakis is an Assistant Professor in Commercial Law, and Seminar Series Coordinator of the University of Nottingham Commercial Law Centre. His research focusses on financial law and financial regulation, particularly debt financing, and the ways in which regulation and policy interact with, and shape, the debt market in the UK and Europe. He teaches Issues in Company Law, Principles of Corporate Insolvency Law, and Contract Law.
Dr Marianthi Papa possesses a diverse background in legal practice and academic research. She holds an LLB from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, an LLM in Oil and Gas Law and a PhD, both from the University of Aberdeen.
Marianthi specializes in: international law of the sea, energy and investment law, and space law. She is particularly interested in the place of private actors in the international plane, and the interplay between different areas of law. Before joining academia, she practiced law in Greece and Cyprus. She also delivers workshops to governmental and business organisations on boundary disputes and energy law.
Dr Christopher Sargeant is an Assistant Professor who specialises in property law. His teaching interests are predominantly in the areas of land law and trusts law and more recently in the law of outer space. He has a keen interest in research across the commercial law spectrum.
Dr Ozlem Ulgen is Associate Professor in Law specialising in the law, ethics, and regulation of AI and robotics in the military and civilian sectors. Her work focuses on protecting human agency, rights, and attribution of legal responsibility. She is an EPSRC SPRITE+ Expert Fellow and Principal Investigator for EPSRC SPRITE+ (EP/S035869/1) project looking at whether it is possible to design and develop a human dignity-aware AI-based decision support system for individuals to access resources and services.
She acts as Academic Legal Expert to the UN Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, Chair of the Accountability Expert Focus Group for IEEE Ethics Certification Programme for Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, Expert Member of IEEE P7000 and P7007, and is a member of the International Legal Materials (ILM) Editorial Advisory Committee.
Dr Klara Polackova Van der Ploeg is Assistant Professor specializing in international law and international dispute settlement. Commercial-law aspects of her research include the international legal regulation of business and international investment law and arbitration.
A dual-qualified attorney-at-law, she practiced law for several years with leading global law firms in the City of London and Prague. At Nottingham, she teaches the LLM modules on International Investment Law and Business and Human Rights.
Dr Eliza Varney is Associate Professor in Law with a research interest in disability equality and contract law. Her research focuses on the compatibility of English contract law with the values pursued by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), in particular the protection of human dignity. Eliza has also conducted research in commercial law (re-examining, in light of the CRPD, the issue of incapacity in agency agreements) and consumer law (focused on human dignity).
Dr Joanna Wisniowska is an Assistant Professor in Intellectual Property Law. She holds a qualifying Master’s degree in law from the Jagiellonian University in Poland and a Magister Juris degree from the University of Oxford. She was awarded her PhD in Law from the University of Nottingham. Joanna practised law in a top-tier IP law firm in Poland where she was part of the Trademark & Patents Team and Technology Media and Telecommunications Team.
Joanna’s primary research interests cover intellectual property law, focusing on patent and trade mark law. She is researching the patentability of biotechnological and pharmaceutical inventions, current issues in European and international IP law, and commercial and economic aspects of intellectual property rights. Due to her prior expertise, Joanna is also interested in projects at the intersection of IP and commercial law, competition law, and corporate insolvency.
Dr Qianlan Wu researches and teaches in the area of competition law, with a focus on competition in China. Dr Wu also researches on economic globalisation, business regulation and the rule of law in China. Dr Wu holds a PhD in Law from the LSE and LLM from University of Edinburgh.
Research Fellows
Narine Ghazaryan
Dr Narine Ghazaryan is Assistant Professor in International and European Law at Radboud University, previously Associate Professor of EU Law at the University of Nottingham, School of Law. She specialises predominantly in EU External Relations Law, in particular enlargement and neighbourhood policies, democracy and human rights promotion.
Due to her teaching experience in UK Corporate Law, Contract and Tort Law, she has developed a keen interest in research conducted in the area of Commercial Law.
Dr Casey Watters is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law at Bond University. His research is focused on insolvency law, where he has published on personal bankruptcy, corporate insolvency and cross-border insolvency. He currently teaches Corporate Law and Comparative Corporate Governance.
Prior to joining Bond, he taught at Nottingham University Business School China and served as the Yong Pung How Research Fellow at Singapore Management University School of Law's Centre for Cross-Border Commercial Law in Asia.
Associate Practitioners
Sunita P. Advani
Sunita P. Advani is an arbitral assistant to Mr Michael Lee, an English arbitrator member of Twenty Essex. In this role, she serves as tribunal secretary in Mr Lee’s complex and high-value international commercial arbitrations across various industries (such as energy, construction, joint ventures and pharmaceuticals) and administered by the major arbitral institutions globally (including the ICC, SIAC and HKIAC).
Sunita is admitted to practice in England and Wales, New York and Singapore. She previously practised international commercial arbitration as a Junior Associate at a leading international law firm in Singapore. Sunita is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and a Member of the Singapore Institute of Arbitrators.
She also sits on the THAC Panel of Arbitrators and the ACICA Tribunal Secretary Panel. Sunita is the Founder and Chair of the Singapore chapter of Very Young Arbitration Practitioners (SG VYAP) and a Co-Founder of ArbChat, a virtual interview series that features global thought leaders in international arbitration.
Tim Lees
Tim Lees is a Partner at Clifford Chance in London. He advises on complex, cross-border, and high value restructurings and insolvencies. His recent experience includes advising the creditors' committee to NMC Healthcare on its $7 billion financial restructuring by way of the first ever Abu Dhabi Global Market administrations and deeds of company arrangement; advising the largest aircraft lessor to Virgin Atlantic on its £1.2 billion restructuring by way of the first ever UK restructuring plan; and advising Codere on its 2020 restructuring by way of scheme of arrangement, and 2021 restructuring by way of consent solicitation.
Emma Taylor
Emma is a Partner in the insolvency practice at Browne Jacobson LLP. She specialises in both corporate and personal, and contentious and non-contentious matters. As a psychology graduate, Emma’s professional career began in the legal department at Muller Dairy UK. She returned to College to convert to law before going on to qualify at Eversheds in 2009. Emma is highly experienced in all forms of insolvency procedure and practice.
The nature of insolvency referrals means that Emma has experience across a range of sectors including: retail, IT, education, local government, healthcare, construction, energy and agriculture. She is accustomed to acting in unusual situations and has a calming and methodical style to offset the stressful nature of her work. Emma is regularly instructed to advise directors on their duties, on the risks of insolvency and on the appointment of insolvency practitioners through to the sale of assets and/or antecedent recovery actions.
Bart Wasiak
Bart Wasiak is a Senior Associate at Arnold & Porter, based in London. He is dual-qualified in New York and in England and Wales. His practice focuses on representing sovereign States and private-sector clients in high-stakes international arbitration proceedings.
He has served as counsel in more than 20 investment-treaty arbitrations under the ICSID and UNCITRAL arbitration rules. He has advised clients in relation to a broad range of disputes, including in the energy, banking, mining and shipping sectors. He is a Vice-Chair for Policy of the American Bar Association’s International Arbitration Committee and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.
Research students
Simge is a PGR student focusing on insolvency law, specifically on the impact of blockchain technology on insolvency regulations. She holds a LLM degree from University of Nottingham and LLB from Ozyegin University in Istanbul, Turkey.
Simge has been a member of the Istanbul Bar Association since 2016 with practising experience in the areas of M&A, Competition Law and Contract Law along with Banking and Finance Law.
Mohammed Asadulla Khan (Asad) is a PGR student at the School of Law. He is conducting research on insolvency law, with particular emphasis on discussing the implementation of free-market principles to reform the UK's insolvency regime.
Asad holds an LLM in Corporate and Commercial Law from the London School of Economics (2019), an LLB from the University of Kent (2018) and also completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice (LPC) in 2020. Asad plans to enter commercial practice after his PhD and intends to consult governments in emerging markets to develop their legal frameworks.
Ioanna is a PGR student exploring Blockchain technology and Intellectual Property law. She holds an LLM in Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law from the University of Sussex (2018) and an LLB Law Degree from Coventry University (2017).
In 2016 she has been appointed President of ELSA Coventry and she has held the voluntary Legal Researcher position at Aspiring Solicitors Coventry (2016). She has also participated at the Warwickshire Young Lawyers Mentoring Scheme (2015) and has been a Law Student Ambassador (2015-2018) for both Coventry University and the University of Sussex.
Brian Sanya Mondoh is a PGR student conducting research on the application of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLTs) and smart contracts in enhancing trust and data integrity in public procurement. Brian holds an LLM in Intellectual Property (Trademarks and Passing Off (Distinction)), a Postgraduate Diploma (Bar Professional Training Course) and an LLB from Nottingham Law School (Nottingham Trent University). Brian also holds the Commonwealth Caribbean’s Council of Legal Education Certificate (L.E.C) awarded by the Hugh Wooding Law School (Trinidad and Tobago).
Brian is a Dual Qualified Advocate, Barrister of England and Wales (Lincoln’s Inn (N.P)), and Attorney-at-Law at the Bar of Trinidad and Tobago. Brian regularly advises and speaks internationally on anti-money laundering and wash trading, crypto asset recovery, and financial and regulatory compliance of crypto asset businesses in jurisdictions monitored by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
Brian has published research and commentary on the regulation of digital assets, Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (‘DAOs’) and Decentralised Finance (‘DeFi’). Brian’s co-authored work (Mondoh, Adami-Johnson, Green and Georgopoulos, 2022) has been listed on SSRN's Top Ten download list in various research networks and has been featured on Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computational Law Report Idea Forum on Composable Governance in the contexts of legal tech, business automation, and Web3.
Ezgi Gizem Turan
Ezgi is a PhD student at the School of Law, where she carries extensive research on the intersection of copyright law and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). She did LLM in Intellectual Property Law at Queen Mary University of London, and an LLB at Istanbul University. Ezgi has actively engaged in various professional and volunteer positions, and she is a qualified lawyer in Türkiye.
Her keen interest revolves around exploring challenges inherent in the relation between distributed ledger technologies and intellectual property rights. All her research endeavours are sponsored by the Republic of Türkiye, Ministry of National Education.
Ezgi appreciates the intricacy of the doctoral journey with the help of art in every kind, seeking to bring creativity into her personal and academic pursuits.
Jia Wang is a PGR student at the School of Law. Before starting her PhD, Jia acquired two master degrees in maritime law in China and the UK respectively. She also worked as an assistant judge in a Chinese local court in 2014 and subsequently, she was a prosecutor in a local procuratorate.
She obtained the Legal Professional Qualification Certificate of the People's Republic of China. Jia's research interest lies in maritime law in general, with a special interest in marine insurance law. Currently, her PhD project focuses on 'Legal Transplantation, Marine Insurance Law and China'.
Emilia Nkemkanma Oris-Onyiri is a doctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham's School of Law where she specialises in International Trade and Economic Law. Emilia holds a Bachelor of Laws degree (First Class) and a Master of Laws in Financial and Commercial Law both from the University of Central Lancashire. Emilia is a qualified Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria where she practiced advocacy in civil, financial and commercial law disputes before commencing her doctoral research. She is a Member of the Nigerian Bar Association and a Member of the Nigerian Institute of Chartered Arbitrators.
Emilia is conducting her research on navigating the barriers to trade liberalization and integration in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Her research seeks to identify and analyse how the trade barriers in ECOWAS can be eliminated to ease the free movement of goods within the Community.