Welcome!

To all those reading this I am David Gibbs; I am a Lecturer in Law at the University of East Anglia.

I created this blog as a general out-let of ideas for my research, as well as keeping those interested up-to-date on my research and general interests.

I completed my PhD thesis at the University of East Anglia in 2014. The thesis was recommended for the award of PhD with no corrections. My external examiner was Prof. Simon Deakin (Cambridge) and internal examiner was Prof. Morten Hviid.
My PhD research centred on directors' duties and company law. The thesis was titled 'Non-Executive Self-Interest: Fiduciary Duties and Corporate Governance'. It was a doctrinal and empirical study on whether self-interest was suitably controlled amongst non-executive directors.

My supervisors were Prof. Mathias Siems, Prof. Duncan Sheehan, Dr. Sara Connolly and Dr. Rob Heywood

All opinions of any existing or future blogpost are my own. They do not necessarily represent the views of any of my associated institutions.
ORCID 0000-0002-6596-8536



Thursday 10 January 2013

Higher Education Professional Development

So, new year and straight back in to the thick of it on the 2nd Jan for a 3-day course on teaching and learning in Higher Education as part of my postgraduate certificate.

As part of the course we did some microteaching which was filmed. The slides can be seen here and the video here. The session time was capped to 7 minutes and to a lay audience. My session was on identifying who a director is. As the slides show it only focused on de facto and de jure directors and did not go in to shadow or nominee directors. Its main focus was the definition given to director under the Companies Act 2006, s. 250 and the courts interpretation.

Unfortunately, the questions after the session were not recorded but demonstrated a benefit of face-to-face teaching of instant feedback. Being asked the question as to whether it matters if you call yourself a director as to identifying one, not only gave the opportunity to explain that point clearly but would allow for the session to be tweaked accordingly for the future. For those wondering, it does not matter whether an individual is called a director as to whether they are. What matters is whether they assumed responsibility for the company.

On my own session, I was able to reflect a little on myself. It was suggested that I engage more with the audience. However, from a lecture perspective I have always preferred to avoid direct student engagement with a big class or at least avoid verbal interaction in a lecture. I have always sought to seek student engagement in skills sessions and workshops where I allow for more diverse teaching styles such as group work or student led teaching, for example.

Moving on, ideally for lectures I would have a clicker to change slides and move a bit more so the technology slightly restricted movement in the session.

A note on my fellow presentees from the microteaching session, they were all excellently delivered, a great opportunity to learn something new and to view different teaching styles.

Friday 4 January 2013

Publication in ICCLR

I have a new publication in the International Company and Commercial Law Review. It is just a short case note due to the slightly limited time I have available at the moment. Christmas was not long enough this year...

Anyway, the note was on the recent Court of Appeal decision in Chandler v Cape [2012] EWCA Civ 525 see here for an earlier blog post. The publication can be found under D Gibbs 'Company Law: Corporate Groups' [2013] 24(1) ICCLR N8.

I will be uploading a blog post next week on a recent presentation I gave at the Teaching and Learning module I have been on as part of my continuing professional development.