Centre
Centre for Law, Emerging Technologies and Business
Unit(s) of assessment: Law
Research theme(s): Safety and Sustainability
School: Nottingham Law School
Overview
The Centre for Law, Emerging Technologies and Business (C-LEB) was established in 2025, building upon Nottingham Law School's strong research foundation in the legal aspects of emerging technologies, and complementing existing strengths across business law, broadly defined.
Our work on emerging technologies encompasses legal aspects of artificial intelligence, blockchain, cryptoassets, cloud computing and modern energy solutions, enhancing our established expertise in business law. The Centre evolved from the Centre for Business and Insolvency Law (CBIL), which was founded in 2012 and rebranded in 2025. Although "insolvency" no longer appears in our name, we maintain significant strength and depth in insolvency expertise, with three Professors, various colleagues and PhD students actively researching in this field.
Recent work in the Business Law sphere has included analysis of business sustainability and social responsibility requirements; controls on business format abuses; legal protection for whistleblowers; education of company directors and methods by which companies can harness the economic benefits of intellectual property.
The Centre maintains a strongly international outlook, with excellent connections to India, China, Chile and Turkey. Recent projects have received research funding from the AHRC, ESRC, the Global Challenges Research Fund, the Natural Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Education of People's Republic of China, the Society of Legal Scholars and the Social Science Foundation of China.
We bring together expertise in legal and business practice, both nationally and internationally, addressing important challenges and contributing to significant debates. The Centre has developed robust links with practitioners and our members regularly organise conferences in collaboration with professional organisations and firms. Notable events have included the annual conference of the Partnership, LLP and LLC Law Forum, and the annual online conference on the Intersection Between Corporate Law and Technology. The Centre was honoured to host the UK Insolvency Service's annual Forward Thinking conference in 2022.
We benefit from rewarding engagement with Honorary and Visiting Professors who have distinguished themselves in insolvency law and business and human rights. They offer guest lectures on our modules, act as wise sounding boards for postgraduate students and participate in research activities.
The Centre has a strong record of supporting early career researchers, with several members having completed doctorates within the Centre. Our taught Masters' modules are research-led and inspiring, and we foster a thriving doctoral community with regular successful completions. It is noteworthy that several Masters' students have been inspired to pursue PhDs in the Centre, and there have been regular publications by both PhD and Masters' students.
The Centre publishes an open-access journal, Nottingham Insolvency and Business Law e-Journal. Launched in 2013, this journal was a pioneer of open research. The journal has featured special issues supporting the partnership conference and showcasing work from early career researchers and welcomes submissions at any time.
News and events
The 8th Annual Conference of the Partnership, LLP and LLC Forum will be held in-person at NTU on 11 September. It always has a good line-up of speakers and this year's event is no exception.
The 4th annual Intersection of Corporate Law and Technology Conference was held online on 23 June, with a keynote speech from Akshaya Kamalnath, Australian National University discussing her forthcoming book, Corporations, Technology and the Law. There were other excellent presentations on various aspects of artificial intelligence and cryptoassets.
The Centre has been rebranded from the Centre for Business and Insolvency Law to the Centre for Law, Emerging Technologies and Business, reflecting recent research strengths of the centre.
Nottingham Insolvency Business and Law e-Journal (NIBLeJ) won an open research award from Nottingham Trent University in recognition of being a pioneer of open access publishing, having been founded in 2012.
The Centre held various events as part of the Mapping Grey Areas in International Legal Approaches to The Failure of Crypto Firms project, funded by the AHRC in partnership with INSOL International and the Istanbul Bar Association. Details of the project and the supporting activities are on the project website.
The 7th Annual Conference of the Partnership, LLP and LLC Law Forum took place on 12 September.
Congratulations to Janice Denoncourt who on Friday, 21 April 2023 was awarded the Prix de la Délégation générale du Québec à Londres at the British and Canadian Studies (BACS) Conference 2023. Janice presented a paper based on her project on the new corporate transparency and disclosure law which recently came into force in Quebec and how this will impact on UK businesses seeking to register in the province. The research will form a strand of Janice’s planned monograph on corporate governance, transparency, and disclosure. The Prize is awarded for the best proposal to carry out research involving Québec.
Hakan Sahin took the lead role in organising the third annual conference on Intersection of Corporate Law and Technology on Monday 26 June 2023. The conference was a joint effort between Nottingham Law School, NTU and the three Turkish Universities, namely, Adana Science and Technology University, Bilkent University and Haci Veli Bayram University. Hakan worked closely working with the Istanbul Bar Association’s Banking and Finance Research Centre as the conference was hosted by the Istanbul Bar Association. Visiting Professor Dominik Skauradszun gave the keynote speech and there was a strong international line up of speakers.
Lorena Carvajal was appointed as a Senior Visiting Fellow for Nottingham Law School. Lorena is well known to many in the School as she had been a visiting scholar during February/March 2023 and again during June/July 2023. During the first period she gave a staff seminar on her research. She engaged well with staff on both visits. She also hosted a research visit by Rebecca Parry to Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (PUCV) in August 2023.
On 29 November the school hosted a guest lecture by Honorary Prof Dominik Skauradszun on MiCAR's Stable Coins & Consumer Protection. The event was organised by Akrum el Menshawy and was well attended.
Report on the Forward Thinking Conference (15 December 2022)
The Centre was pleased to host the Insolvency Service's Forward Thinking conference on 18 November 2022. This conference showcased academic and practitioner research projects dealing with current issues in insolvency law.
We were also pleased that our LLM students Oluwaseun Oyekan, Moyinoluwa Adegoroye, Oreoluwa Sanmi-Lawal, Mary Martins and Opeoluwa Olowe, who are all currently studying corporate insolvency law, were able to attend and write a report.
Find out more and view the videos of the presentations on this year's papers on the Forward Thinking Conference website.
- Professor Cillian Ryan, Pro Vice Chancellor for International matters at Nottingham Trent University, Opening Speech
- Mark Austen, Chair of the Insolvency Service Board, Opening Speech
Report on 5th Annual Conference of the Partnership, LLP and LLC Law Forum (15 September 2022)
The conference attracted 35 registered delegates, including academics, solicitors, barristers, and tax advisors. Speakers included representatives of BEIS and HMRC, partners from leading City and other firms, academics from other institutions and, in what is becoming a tradition for the conference, an investigative journalist. The diversity of speakers was explicitly praised in the post-Conference feedback and reflects an integral part of the Forum’s mission, which is to promote debate on partnership law and the law relating to other business vehicles that provide alternatives to the limited company, and to develop collaboration between academics and practitioners researching and teaching in these areas of law and connected areas. It was also pleasing that two PhD students attended (and a third registered but did not attend).
By Elspeth Berry
Report on the use of cryptoassets in Turkey (March 2022)
In Turkey the volatility of the domestic Lira coupled with the distrust to the government’s economic policies, have caused many consumers to embrace cryptocurrencies. A recent pilot study by researchers at Nottingham Law School, involving elite interviews with Turkish industry professionals, has revealed some interesting aspects of this trend.
By Dr Hakan Sahin, Prof Rebecca Parry and Dr Alex Kastrinou.
Nottingham Insolvency and Business Law eJournal (NIBLeJ)
Nottingham Insolvency and Business Law eJournal (NIBLeJ) is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Centre for Business and Insolvency Law at the Nottingham Law School, Nottingham, the United Kingdom.
Nottingham Law Journal
Nottingham Law School publishes the Nottingham Law Journal. The journal was founded in 1977 (as the Trent Law Journal), changing to its current title in 1992. It is peer-reviewed and normally published annually.
Collaborations
Collaborating with the University of Leeds and Wuhan University, Zhao is currently involved in a three-year project funded jointly by the ESRC Newton Fund and the Natural Science Foundation of China entitled ‘Boosting Growth through Strengthening Investor and Creditor Protection in China: How China can learn from the UK Experience’.
Parry has strong links with the work of Dr Risham Garg at the National Law University, Delhi, having collaborated on comparative research, a joint conference and collaborative teaching and with a project, supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund, on the legal framework needed to advance the transformative potential of digital economies in developing countries.
Publications
Selected publications
Berry, E., ‘Limited partnership law and private equity: an instance of legislative capture?’ (2019) 19 Journal of Corporate Law Studies 105-135
Denoncourt, J., Intellectual property, finance and corporate governance. Routledge research in intellectual property (Abingdon: Routledge 2018)
Parry, R., ‘Legal Approaches to Management of the Risk of Cloud Computing Insolvencies’ (with R Bisson) (2020) 20 Journal of Corporate Law Studies 421-451
Sahin, H., Host Government Agreements and Law in the Energy Sector: The case of Azerbaijan and Turkey (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018)
Walters, A., ‘Modified Universalisms & the Role of Local Legal Culture in the Making of Cross-Border Insolvency Law’ (2019) 93 American Bankruptcy Law Journal 47
Zhao, J., ‘Promoting More Socially Responsible Corporations through a Corporate Law Regulatory Framework’ (2017) 37Legal Studies 103–136
Zhao, J., ‘The Commons, the Common Good and Extraterritoriality: Seeking Sustainable Global Justice through Corporate Responsibility’ (with Wen, S.) (2020) 12 Sustainability 1-21
Partnerships and collaborations
Collaborating with the University of Leeds and Wuhan University, Zhao is currently involved in a three-year project funded jointly by the ESRC Newton Fund and the Natural Science Foundation of China entitled ‘Boosting Growth through Strengthening Investor and Creditor Protection in China: How China can learn from the UK Experience’.
The Centre enjoys excellent collaborations with its Visiting Professor Dominik Skauradszun and its Honorary Professors Neil Cooper, Hamish Anderson and Paul Bowden.
Related projects
Elspeth Berry has researched and written widely on the theme of business partnership law (including general partnerships, limited partnerships and LLPs). She is one of only a few academics with strong interests in these important forms of business medium. She has engaged regularly with regulators and with practitioners, and organises the successful annual conferences of the Partnership, LLP and LLC Law Forum, a network of academics and practitioners from across the globe which she established.
This project, led by Janice Denoncourt, considers the lack of transparency and disclosure of company-owned intangible intellectual property rights such as patents, trade marks and copyright from a corporate governance stand point. The project offers realistic solutions and policy recommendations in this complex evolving interdisciplinary area of law with potential for significant real world impact.
This project, led by Rebecca Parry, aims to identify the legal infrastructure needed to support the digital economies which offer transformative potential for some developing countries. It will develop recommendations regarding the corporate governance and insolvency legal frameworks required to develop digital economies in a sustainable way.
The project, led by Jingchen Zhao, explores the possibilities of using corporate law as an effective tool to structure economic activities, and it makes sense to discuss the quality and relevance of regulatory frameworks and the role of the government and supranational authorities in reconstructing economic and financial norms.
The project, led by Jingchen Zhao, aims to utilise the corporate disclosure requirement enshrined in Section 54 of the U.K. Modern Slavery Act as an example of latest home states’ soft corporate responsibility law-making efforts to foster business self-regulation, and to explore its interactions with other progressively hard law means with extraterritorial impacts.
This project, led by Jingchen Zhao and Rebecca Parry, aims to identify the complications brought by the emergence and existence of zombie companies in China, and to evaluate the changing institutional environment in an attempt to facilitate a more enabling insolvency law scheme to deal with these difficulties in the context of market economy with Chinese characteristics.
Intellectual property
Doctoral Candidates
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