Call for Papers – Private International Law Section of the Society of Legal Scholars Annual Conference 2025
A call for papers has recently been issued by Michiel Poesen and Patricia Živković (University of Aberdeen), co-convenors of the Society of Legal Scholars Private International Law section, for the PIL section of the SLS Annual Conference 2025 at Leeds University from 3 to 4 September 2025. The call is reproduced below, as received by the promoters.
This is a call for papers and panels for the Private International Law section of the 2025 Society of Legal Scholars’ Annual Conference to be held at Leeds University, from 2nd-4th September. The Private International Law section will meet in the second half of the conference on 3-4 September and will have 4 sessions, each lasting 90 minutes. Doctoral students are very welcome and are encouraged to submit papers for consideration in the Subject Sections Programme.
Conference Information
There will be no theme for the conference in 2025; we hope this allows for real creativity in the ways we, as legal scholars, can explore our subject and the viewpoints we take on it and we look forward to a substantively and methodologically diverse and engaging range of papers across the wide spectrum that is our common subject of law.
However, we will be picking up again on themes from the 2023 conference at Oxford Brookes University and explore ways in which our work and our scholarship can inform the public good, public policy and public discourse. As legal scholars none of us wish our work to disappear into the aether unnoticed. We do the research we do and the scholarship we do precisely because we want it to make some sort of difference.
We will also pick up on themes from the 2024 conference at the University of Bristol and continue to explore the ways in which scholarship and legal research has become ever more interdisciplinary as we seek to grapple with ever more complex and varied local, national and international challenges. Inevitably those things are linked. We want to make a difference and increasingly that can best – or only – be done by engaging critically, even before we start, both with other disciplines and with those we hope will read and take notice of our research – the “research user” in the dreaded jargon.
The 2025 Leeds conference will be fully in person. Recordings of both plenaries, the ECR and EDI sessions, together with the AGM and Council meeting, will be available after the event for a limited period for delegates. Council members who are not attending the 2025 Conference will still be able to attend the Council meeting and AGM virtually and, consistent with our EDI priorities, speakers who cannot attend may, on sufficient notice, be able to present virtually. We will also endeavour to allow speakers unable to attend at the last minute due to ill-health or travel restrictions to present virtually. This decision reflects a move globally to resume in person conferences, the significant costs surrounding the delivery of a fully virtual attendance. We will also continue to offer support for attendance via our Annual Conference Additional Support Fund (ASF) to support those with special circumstances warranting additional support. Priority for support will be given to applicants who have no other source of funding.
To find out more please visit https://www.slsconference.com/.
Submitting through Oxford Abstracts
If you are interested in delivering a paper or organising a panel, please submit your paper abstract or panel details by 11:59pm UK time on Friday 4 April 2025. All abstracts and panel details must be submitted through the Oxford Abstracts conference system which can be accessed here – and following the instructions (select ‘Track’ for the relevant subject section). If you registered for Oxford Abstracts for last year’s conference, please ensure that you use the same e-mail address this year if that address remains current. For those whose papers are accepted, the original submission offers the facility to upload a full paper nearer the time. If you experience any issues in using Oxford Abstracts, please contact slsconference@mosaicevents.co.uk.
This is the third year we will be running first blind peer review, with a subsequent non-blind review once initial decisions have been made to consider profile diversity before final decisions are made and communicated. The feedback from convenors on this process was overwhelmingly positive.
Decisions will be communicated by Friday 2 May 2025.
Submission Format
We welcome proposals representing a full range of intellectual perspectives and methodological approaches in the subject section, and from those at all stages of their careers.
Those wishing to present a paper should submit a title and abstract of around 300 words. Those wishing to propose a panel should submit a document outlining the theme and rationale for the panel and the names of the proposed speakers (who must have agreed to participate) and their abstracts. Sessions are 90 minutes in length and so we recommend panels of three speakers, though the conference organisers reserve the right to add speakers to panels in the interests of balance and diversity.
As the SLS is keen to ensure that as many members with good quality papers as possible can present, speakers should not present twice at the conference at the expense of another credible paper. When you submit an abstract via Oxford Abstracts you will be asked to note if you are also responding to calls for papers or panels from other sections.
The Best Paper Prize
Please also note that the SLS offers two prizes. First, The 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 £300 monetary award, and the winning paper will, subject to the usual process of review and publisher’s conditions, appear in Legal Studies. To be eligible: speakers must be fully paid-up members of the SLS (Where a paper has more than one author, all authors eligible for membership of the Society under its rule 3 must be members, and must be fully paid up. The decision as to eligibility of any co-authors will be taken by the Membership Secretary, whose decision will be final.); papers should be submitted as a word document and must not exceed 12,000 words including footnotes (as counted in Word; figures and tables are not included in the word count);; papers must be uploaded to the paperbank by 11:59pm UK time on Friday 22 August 2025; papers must not have been published previously or have been accepted or be under consideration for publication; papers must have been accepted by a convenor in a subject section and an oral version of the paper must be presented at the Annual Conference by at least one of the authors.
Where a Convenor or Final Panellist is unable to judge, for example, where there is a conflict of interest, he or she will nominate another member of the Section or Executive Committee member to act as an alternate (A conflict of interest includes, but is not limited to, where a Convenor, Chair or Judge is a colleague or PhD supervisor of an author).
The SLS adopts the same policy as Legal Studies as regards AI. The policy is available via this link.
The Best Paper by a Doctoral Student Prize
In 2020 the Society launched the Best Paper by a Doctoral Student Prize, which is open to currently registered doctoral students who are members of the Society. The Prize is £300. There is no link to publication in Legal Studies arising from this award, but any winner would be welcome to submit their paper for consideration by the Society’s journal. To be eligible: speakers must be fully paid-up members of the SLS who are Doctoral students. (Where a paper has more than one author, all authors eligible for membership of the Society under its rule 3 must be fully paid up members and all authors must be Doctoral students, whatever their discipline). The decision as to eligibility of any co-authors will be taken by the Membership Secretary, whose decision will be final; papers must be submitted in word document format and should not exceed 12,000 words including footnotes (as counted in Word; figures and tables are not included in the word count); papers must be uploaded to the paperbank by 11:59pm UK time on Friday 22 August 2025; papers must not have been published previously or have been accepted or be under consideration for publication; and papers must have been accepted by a convenor in a subject section and an oral version of the paper must be presented by at least one of the authors at the Annual Conference. Where a paper eligible for this prize wins the Best Paper Prize, the judges may at their discretion award the prize for Best Paper by a Doctoral Student to a different nominated paper. The judges may announce a shortlist at their discretion with the winner to be announced by the first week in August. Where a Convenor or Final Panellist is unable to judge, for example, where there is a conflict of interest, he or she will nominate another member of the Section or Executive Committee member to act as an alternate (A conflict of interest includes, but is not limited to, where a Convenor, Chair or Judge is a colleague or PhD supervisor of an author). The SLS adopts the same policy as Legal Studies as regards AI. The policy is available via this link.
Registration and Paying for the Conference
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 Friday 13 June 2025 to secure their place within the programme, though please do let us know if this deadline is likely to pose any problems for you. Booking information will be circulated in due course and will open after the decisions on the response to the calls are made.