This week’s ship.energy podcast features Professor Simon Baughen, Professor of Shipping Law at the University of Swansea.

In conversation with Mark Williams, Professor Baughen considers the impact of the EU’s ‘Fit for 55’ basket of measures on the shipping sector, including the possibility that shipbuilding contracts may require revision. He looks at the ongoing discussion about altering charterparties to replace due despatch clauses with voyage optimisation clauses. He also addresses some key questions about the EU’s proposed Ocean Fund, such as its administration and decisions on the allocation of funding.

Professor Baughen was appointed as Professor of Shipping Law at the University of Swansea in September 2013. He studied law at Oxford and practised in maritime law for several years before joining academia. His research interests lie mainly in the field of shipping law, but also include the law of trusts and the environmental law implications of the activities of multinational corporations in the developing world. 

His book, Shipping Law, has run to seven editions (soon to be eight) and is well-known to academics and students alike as by far the most learned and approachable work on the subject. Furthermore, he is now the author of the very well-established practitioner's work Summerskill on Laytime. He has an extensive list of publications to his name, including International Trade and the Protection of the Environment, and Human Rights and Corporate Wrongs - Closing the Governance Gap. He has also written and taught extensively on commercial law, trusts and environmental law. 

Professor Baughen is a member of the Institute of International Shipping and Trade Law, a University Research Centre within the School of Law, and he currently teaches at Swansea on the LLM in: Carriage of Goods by Sea, Land and Air; Charterparties Law and Practice; International Corporate Governance.