View Leverhulme Lecture presentation slides
At the Leverhulme Lecture and Distinguished Experts Dialogue on Wednesday 16 June 2021, leading international jurists, senior leaders and academics, and renowned trade and investment experts, shared insights and identified new directions for the global economy in the context of pandemic recovery and the global Sustainable Development Goals, guided by international law and policy.
Professor Stephen J Toope, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, welcomed guests to the online event and the chair, Professor Thomas Cottier, founder and former Managing Director of the World Trade Institute and Professor Emeritus of European and International Economic Law at the University of Bern.
The event featured a Distinguished Experts Dialogue between respected international judges and arbitrators, expert professors of international trade and investment law, and senior leaders of international organisations and educational institutions in the field of international trade and investment law, public policy and sustainable development.
The dialogue was preceded by a public online Leverhulme Lecture, opened by Professor Diane Coyle Co-Director of the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, University of Cambridge, which was provided by Professor Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger, Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor, University of Cambridge, Senior Director, Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL), Full Professor of International Law, School of Environment, Entrepreneurship & Development, University of Waterloo and author of Athena’s Treaties: Crafting Trade and Investment Accords for Sustainable Development (Oxford University Press, June 2021). Professor Avidan Kent Associate Professor at the University of East Anglia closed the lecture.
This series of open public Leverhulme Lectures raises complex, inter-linked ‘wicked problems’ and innovative solutions to global economic concerns, health pandemics, climate change, natural resources and biodiversity degradation, poverty and injustice. It considers how the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer a common global public policy agenda, supported by binding international legal principles and rules derived from treaty regimes, interpreted by courts and tribunals, for pandemic response and recovery.
In this lecture, experts considered how international trade and investment law, including dispute settlement, can foster a more sustainable recovery of the world economy, advancing new directions for research, education and practice in this field?