Chinese and English Maritime Law Conference
The Institute of Maritime Law recently organised the Chinese and English Maritime Law Conference. This major UK conference welcomed academic lawyers to examine latest developments in Chinese maritime law and was held in Southampton and London over 3 days at the end of April.
Delegates included Professor Tingzhong Fu from Tsinghua University and Professors Beiping Chu and Lixin Han from Dalian Maritime University. Professor Zhengliang Hu from Shanghai Maritime University provided many insights into the revision of Chinese Maritime Law. Professor Jinsong Zhao from East China University of Shipping Law and colleague Dr Chen Qi, a past Visiting Scholar to the Institute of Maritime Law. Another speaker, Vivian Jianfei Zeng, is a current Visiting Scholar and an LLM graduate.
IML speakers included Professor Yvonne Baatz, Professor Hilton Staniland, Professor Paul Todd, Dr Andrea Lista, Filippo Lorenzon, Johanna Hjalmarsson and Jenny Jingbo Zhang who has been an instrumental part of the organising committee for the entire event together with PhD students Dingjing Huang and Haihua Song.
IML Member and member of the organising committe Johanna Hjalmarsson says:
"Organising a conference is a lot of work but in the end it is always worth it. There is such a buzz when the speakers arrive in town and the atmosphere of exchange of thoughts and views is great. The speakers, most of whom had been to Southampton many times before, were all wonderful, our PhD researchers were able to make new connections with people who share their research interests, and our LLM students were able to gain different perspectives of maritime law from what they have been studying throughout the year."
In 2013, IML organised a conference on Chinese Insurance Law; both events were sponsored by the Southampton Confucius Institute. This year's event was held at the University of Southampton on the first day and in the London offices of the international law firm Norton Rose Fulbright and the University of Greenwich for the rest of the event.
The conference was a great success and proved valuable to our students that attended:
LLM student Heidi Haiyue Huang adds: "Thank you for arranging this fabulous event! I really learned a lot."
Some conference materials including all abstracts and bios are available on the conference web site, which can be accessed through https://blackboard.soton.ac.uk/ by signing in as a guest and searching for the module cml-conf.