The IEL Collective is calling for expressions of interest to participate in a pilot Mentoring and Professional Development Scheme in 2023.

The IEL Collective provides a space for critical reflection on the law, regulation and governance of the global economy. Our community works to foster epistemological and methodological diversity in the discipline, which we believe can contribute towards the development of a more holistic landscape of scholarship on law and the governance of the global economy.

An important component of our work is to provide platforms to engage with and amplify traditionally marginalised narratives, voices, issues and methodologies in the field, including those of women, ethnic and sexual minorities, Indigenous peoples and communities from the global south.

As part of this work, we are opening a scheme for early career and doctoral scholars from a range of career stages who would like to be paired with a mentor for the purpose of developing their academic practice. Mentees and mentors will meet over the course of the year to discuss tangible aspects of mentees’ research or teaching. We envisage that the scheme will help to create a more open, connected and collaborative academic culture, particularly among those researchers
from backgrounds that remain underrepresented in our discipline.

The scheme will also provide opportunities for online and in-person networking and will be holding masterclasses and workshops on aspects of academic work, including on research and writing, methodology, and pathways to impact and public engagement.

The scheme will be open for expressions of interest until 4 December 2022 and run from January to December 2023. Applicants are asked to commit to participating in the scheme for the full year and should be no more than three years post-PhD.

If interested in participating as a mentee, please fill out an expression of interest form by Friday, 15 December 2023.

For more information or queries, please see our website or contact ielcollective@warwick.ac.uk

Dr Stephen Connelly, Professor Celine Tan and Dr Karina Patricio Ferreira Lima submitted evidence to a parliamentary inquiry on debt and development. The inquiry examines the impact of high levels of debt on development in low-income countries (LICs) and the tools and strategies employed to reduce the debt burden. Launched by the House of Commons International Development Committee (IDC), the inquiry aims to examine the high levels of sometimes unsustainable national debt in low-income countries, much of which is owed to private sector creditors in high-income countries such as the UK and impact of the debt on development. The inquiry also focuses on the tools the UK government uses or could use to help bring debt levels in low-income countries down to more sustainable levels.

In their submission, published on the IDC website here, the authors argue that ‘the existing fragmented and highly politicised regime for sovereign finance law and governance is exacerbating the sovereign debt crises in low-income countries’ and that a ‘key area of concern is the lack of appropriate mechanisms to deal with the burgeoning debt owed by sovereigns to ‘private creditors’. The authors propose ‘an opt-in statutory standstill which will place LICs in a fairer position to negotiate debt relief with creditors’. They signposted the Committee to a proposal they had developed in 2020 for a statutory stay on recovering commercial debt repayments to free up resources in indebted countries to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors believe that this proposal can be adapted to the current debt initiatives, such as the G20 Common Framework for Debt Treatments beyond the DSSI.

Dr Connelly, Professor Tan and Dr Patricio Ferreira Lima said of their participation in the inquiry: ‘We have been working together since 2020 on the legislative solutions that the UK Parliament could adopt to contribute towards ensuring private creditor involvement in sovereign debt restructuring, particularly of low-income countries. We believe that the UK government can play a significant role in dealing with the sovereign debt crisis in low-income countries that are currently exacerbated by intersecting food, energy and climate-related crises that are impacting on social and economic development across the developing world. We are delighted to participate in this inquiry and hope to further contribute to parliamentary initiatives in this area’.

Read more about the authors’ work here.

The IEL Collective researchers are collaborating in a new project, Ruptures21: Informality in COVID-19 Times. The collaboration responds to the challenges posed by old and current economic, social and legal dynamics and their impact on the human and non-human world. Through international interdisciplinary and institutional collaborations, it advances novel ways to understand and address global issues.

Ruptures21 call for a break with set approaches and new ways of acting and being.

Our first arena of study is on Informal Work and Public Health in Colombia: Targeted Regulation during the COVID-19 Global Emergency which will explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on informal workers in Colombia.

This project brings together a group of socio-legal scholars, labour economists, public health experts, anthropologists, cinematographers, infographers, web-designers and public policy makers in order to study the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on informal workers and their economies, using Colombia as its main case study.

Mixing media and blurring the boundaries between quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and between practice and the academy, outcomes of this project include multilingual policy briefings, life histories, documentaries, online outreach platforms and the first comprehensive data-base of aggregated data on informality in Colombia. Highlighting both the enormous yet often forgotten contribution of informal workers to the general economy of nations and the ultra-precarities they face in moments of public health crises, the outcomes of this project make an urgent call for a new set of new social, economic and health policies in Colombia and similar countries.

Informality in Covid-19 Times is supported by the University of Kent, the University of Essex, the University of Warwick and Rosario University and has been conducted in alliance with the Observatory for Women’s Equity (ICESI, Colombia), LaboUR, the Research Group on Public Health and Epidemiology (Rosario University) and AlianzaEFI.

The collaboration forms part of ongoing work by the IEL Collective to encourage public debate and policy innovation in relation to the role of the current international economic order. Supported by 12 institutions (including Warwick Law School, Essex Law School, Kent Law School and Rosario University), the IEL Collective has been responding to the COVID-19 pandemic with a series of open access interventions, articles and interviews.

The IEL Collective has launched a YouTube channel to share our thoughts and ideas through a series called IEL Collective Conversations. Our first series (1-7) is on the intersections of international economic law and the COVID-19 pandemic but we hope to chat about other things IEL-related in due course.

We are launching this Medium publication so that we can individually and collectively publish works that highlight the challenges, problems and opportunities for international economic law as it is broadly defined. Spanning international trade, development, financing, intellectual property, investment law, and business and human rights, our scholars are working together to challenge the status quo and ensure law and public policy work effectively for people and communities.

Our first article is on International Economic Law and COVID-19. In this intervention, we, members of The IEL Collective, reflect on (some of) the ways in which IEL is intermingled with the problematic patterns of globalized production and consumption underpinning the slow responses and rapid spread of COVID-19; and the ways in which we could respond to this crisis in a more globally just and sustainable way.

The IEL Collective will be launching a project to collate thoughts, ideas and reflections on this reimagination. If you would like to contribute to our project, please send us an email to ielcollective@warwick.ac.uk. We would love to hear from you.

This article was written collectively by Donatella Alessandrini, School of Law, University of Kent; Daria Davitti, Faculty of Law, Lund University and School of Law, University of Nottingham; Luis Eslava, School of Law, University of Kent; Clair Gammage, School of Law, University of Bristol; Annamaria La Chimia, School of Law, University of Nottingham; Serena Natile, School of Law, Brunel University London; Karina Patricio Ferreira Lima, School of Law, University of Durham; Celine Tan, School of Law, University of Warwick; Tara Van Ho, School of Law, University of Essex; Amaka Vanni, Independent Scholar and President-Elect, African Society of International Economic Law; Paolo Vargiu, School of Law, University of Leicester; and Anil Yilmaz Vastardis, School of Law, University of Essex.

Amanda Perry-Kessaris curated this lovely exhibition of The IEL Pop-Up Collection, a collection of everyday objects that represent facets of international economic law. Find out more on Amanda's page

Our inuaugral conference held at the University of Warwick from 6 - 7 November 2019 was attended by almost 80 colleagues from all over the world. The depth and richness of the presentations and discussions at the conference were second to none. We promised to bring the conference to those who could not make it and our three-part blog symposia is way of us doing so.

The symposia is edited by Dr Clair Gammage, School of Law, University of Bristol and Dr Amaka Vanni, Independent Scholar and President-Elect, African International Economic Law Network (AfIELN) . The symposia is published by AfronomicsLaw and University of Bristol Law School Blog.

We would like to thank AfronomicsLaw editors Olabisi Akinkugbe, James Gathii,  Nthope Mapefane and Titilayo Adebola and Lee McConnell and all at the University of Bristol Law School Blog for their support in publishing this symposia.

We would like to thank for their support in publishing this symposium.The IEL Collective Inaugural Conference Symposia