Conflict of Laws Section: Call for Papers and Panels for 2017 SLS Annual Conference at University College Dublin

Professor Andrew Dickinson, St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, has kindly provided this information regarding the conference referred to below. Dr Lorna Gillies, University of Strathclyde, and Dr Máire Ní Shúilleabháin, University College Dublin are co-conveners.

This is a call for papers and panels for the Conflict of Laws section of the 2017 SLS Annual Conference to be held at University College Dublin from Tuesday 5th September – Friday 8th September.  This year’s theme is ‘The Diverse Unities of Law’.

This section is new to the SLS Annual Conference and is being run as a trial section. With your support, we can ensure that the section is included in future conferences.

The Conflict of Laws section will meet in the first half of the conference on Tuesday 5th and Wednesday 6th September. Two speakers (Professor Alex Mills, UCL and Professor Eva Lein, BIICL/University of Lausanne) have kindly already agreed to give a paper within the section.

We intend that the section will comprise four sessions of 90 minutes, with 3 or more papers being presented in each session, followed by discussion. At least three of the sessions will be organised by subject matter. We hope, if submissions allow, to be able to set aside the fourth session for papers by early career researchers (within 5-years of PhD or equivalent).

We welcome proposals from scholars in the field for papers or panels on any issue relating to any topical aspect of the Conflict of Laws (private international law), including but not limited to those addressing this year’s conference theme.
If you are interested in delivering a paper, please submit a proposed title and abstract of around 300 words. If you wish to propose a panel, please submit a document outlining the theme and rationale for the panel and the names of the proposed speakers (who must have agreed to participate), together with their proposed titles and abstracts.

All abstracts and panel details must be submitted by midnight on Monday 27th March through the EasyChair conference system which can be accessed using this link.  Full instructions on how to use the EasyChair system can be found here. If you experience any issues in using EasyChair, please contact Jed Meers at jed.meers@york.ac.uk.

As the SLS is keen to ensure that as many members with good quality papers as possible are able to present, we discourage speakers from presenting more than one paper at the conference.  With this in mind, when you submit an abstract via EasyChair, you will be asked to note if you are also responding to calls for papers or panels from other sections.

We should also note that the SLS offers a Best Paper Prize which can be awarded to academics at any stage of their career and which is open to those presenting papers individually or within a panel.  The Prize carries a £250 monetary award and the winning paper will be published in the first issue of Legal Studies in 2018.  To be eligible:

speakers must be fully paid-up members of the SLS;

papers must not exceed 12,000 words including footnotes (as counted in Word);

papers must be uploaded to EasyChair by midnight on Monday 28th August; and

papers must not have been published previously or have been accepted or be under consideration for publication.

We have also been asked to remind you that all speakers will need to book and pay to attend the conference and that they will need to register for the conference by the end of June in order to secure their place within the programme, though please do let me/us know if this is likely to pose any problems for you.  Booking information will be circulated in due course.

A call for posters will be issued separately in due course.