Blog giving empirical information on commercial arbitration in Europe

As I have mentioned before, my current academic work is focused on a 5-year ￡1m ESRC-funded project on commercial arbitration across Europe.  One of the obvious difficulties with academic publications is that they take a very long time to come out. In addition, any academic publication needs to be focused on a particular topic, while the nature of the research we are doing means that we will generate a large amount of information. As a result, if we only release information through academic publications, much of the information we develop will never see the light of day. Plus, of course, lots of people don't read academic publications.

With all this in mind, we have started a project blog: https://commercialarbitrationineurope.wordpress.com/project-blog/.

Importantly, this is not just a factual blog of “we are doing this research now”. Rather, it is designed to be a place where we provide some ongoing updates on information the project has (or at least seems to have) developed. That is, the blog is designed to give “provisional” thoughts, based on work so far. Final academic publications may have very different conclusions/analysis, of course, as they will be based on far more thorough examination. But the blog allows us to release some information in a timely manner, and in a way that is more approachable for most people than an academic article.

I haven’t passed the blog on prior to this, as I wanted to make sure there was some substance to it before we made it public. But there are several posts now, so I am passing it on. Additional posts will, of course, be made.

Right now there are posts on “Construction arbitration in Denmark”, “The Role of Barristers in English Arbitration”, “Ad hoc arbitration in Denmark”, “The Absence of Arbitration in Link?ping”, “Ad Hoc Arbitration in Norway” and “Foreign Experience and Entry into International Commercial Arbitration”.

All of these posts discuss information generated through interviews with commercial arbitration practitioners - interviews thus far have been performed in London, Denmark (Copenhagen, Aarhus, Odense), Sweden (Stockholm, Malmo, Helsingborg, Gothenburg) and Norway (Oslo, Stavanger, Bergen).

On the right of the website, you will see a link into which you can put your contact details if you want to be updated when the blog is updated, which will keep you informed about the results being generated by the research. You are, of course, also welcome to post comments on individual blog posts.

And, of course, feel free to pass on the blog to any individuals or networks to whom you think the research would be of interest.