Stephen Girvin

Stephen Girvin has been a tenured full Professor of Law at NUS since October 2008 and MPA Professor of Maritime Law from 1 August 2015. He was Vice-Dean (Research and International Programmes) 2010-2011 and Vice-Dean (Research) 2012-2014. He was appointed Director of the Centre for Maritime Law (CML) from 1 January 2015. Under his leadership, CML has achieved recognition as a leading centre for the study of maritime law in Singapore and the Asia-Pacific region.

Stephen has held faculty positions at the University of Aberdeen, the University of Nottingham, and NUS. He held a Chair in Maritime Law at the University of Birmingham from 2006-2008. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Cape Town, TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland, University of Sydney (Parsons Fellow), Direito Getulio Vargas de São Paolo, Zhejiang University Guanghua School of Law, Hangzhou, the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS), Queen Mary University of London, and at the International Shipping Law School, East China University of Political Science and Law. In 2022, he was a Visiting Professor, hosted by Professor Massimiliano (Max) Piras, at the Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza, Università di Cagliari.

Stephen’s primary expertise is in commercial maritime (shipping) law. However, his interests also extend to international commercial law and company law and partnership law. He retains a residual interest in legal history, mainly colonial legal history, the focus of his earlier graduate work, and maritime legal history.

In the commercial maritime field, Stephen is the sole author of Carriage of Goods by Sea 3rd edn (Oxford University Press, 2022). Previous editions were published in 2007 and 2011, respectively. Stephen is a contributing editor with a team of authors from 7 King’s Bench Walk, writing Carver on Charterparties (Sweet & Maxwell), first published in 2017 and the 2nd edition in 2021. He is co-editor (with Vibe Ulfbeck), author and co-author of Maritime Organisation, Management and Liability: A Legal Analysis of New Challenges in the Maritime Industry (Hart Publishing 2021) and a contributing editor of the 14th edition of Marsden and Gault on Collisions at Sea (Sweet & Maxwell), published in 2016. Earlier, he contributed book chapters to Tomotaka Fujita (ed), The Rotterdam Rules in the Asia-Pacific Region (Shojihomu, 2014), D Rhidian Thomas (ed), A New Convention for the Carriage of Goods by Sea: The Rotterdam Rules (Lawtext, 2009), and D Rhidian Thomas (ed), Liability Regimes in Contemporary Maritime Law (Informa, 2007).

Stephen was a founding member (to 2019) of the Editorial Committee of the International Maritime and Commercial Law Yearbook, published as part of Lloyd’s Maritime & Commercial Law Quarterly (Routledge Informa). He is the Singapore Overseas Correspondent for Lloyd’s Maritime & Commercial Law Quarterly. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of International Maritime Law (Lawtext) and the Transnational Commercial Law Review (Queen Mary, University of London).

Outside the domain of maritime law, Stephen has been an editor of Palmer’s Company Law (Sweet & Maxwell) for over two decades. Earlier in his career, he was a contributing author of Palmer’s Company Law Annotated Guide to the Companies Act 2006 (Sweet & Maxwell, 2007), principal editor and author of Charlesworth’s Company Law 18th ed (Sweet & Maxwell, 2010), and a contributing author to the 17th edition of this work.

Stephen regularly speaks at Singapore maritime events, international and regional conferences, and colloquia. The latter have included events in Beijing, Dalian, Hong Kong, Panama, Rio de Janeiro, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, and Tokyo, and in Aberdeen, Athens, Bergen, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Oslo, Rotterdam, and Stockholm. Stephen is a member of the Maritime Law Association of Singapore (MLAS) and the British Maritime Law Association (BMLA). He is a Supporting Member of the London Maritime Arbitrators Association (LMAA) and an Associate Fellow of the Nautical Institute (AFNI). In 2022, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). He acts from time to time as a consultant.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

• Maritime Law
• Shipping Law
• Company Law
• International Commercial Law
• Legal History