Dr William Bull (W.A.)
William is universitair docent bij de capgroep privaatrecht. Zijn huidige onderzoek is op het gebied van sportrecht. In dit gebied heeft hij zich vooral gericht op sportagenten en met name op de regulering van de toegang tot en het uitvoeren van het beroep van voetbalintermediair. Bovendien heeft hij onderzoek gedaan naar de toepassing van anti-witwaswetgeving op de professionele voetbalsector in de context van het UEFA Research Grant-programma. Hij is ook lid van de International Advisory Board van de Rivista di Diritto Ed Economia Dello Sport. William heeft bijgedragen aan cursussen voor sportrechten en gepresenteerd op conferenties en workshops in zijn onderzoeksgebied. Hij is ook de huidige coördinator van de European Private Law elective cursus, evenals lid van het bibliotheekcomité.
Expertises
Sports law
EU Optional Instruments
European Private Law, particularly Contract Law
Intellectual Property Law
English Law
Legal Theory and Legal Reasoning
Loopbaan
William has dual British and Italian nationality. He read English and Italian law at University College London and graduated with Honours in 2004. Subsequently after a period teaching Business English (including Legal English) he obtained his Master’s degree in European law from Maastricht University. During his Master studies William also worked as a student assistant at the METRO Institute for Transnational Legal Research, assisting the Editor of the Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative law and the coordinator of the Tort law Ius Commune Europaeum casebook.
William joined the Maastricht European Private Law Institute (M-EPLI) as a Junior Researcher in June 2011. For three years prior to this he performed a similar role for the European Centre for Judges and Lawyers, the Luxembourg Antenna of the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA). During this time he developed, managed and delivered workshops and seminars on various aspects of institutional, procedural and substantive EU law for officials of EU Institutions and Member State public administrations, as well as civil servants (including judges) from Candidate and Associate Countries, and acted as Director of EIPA Luxembourg’s Master of European Legal Studies, in the context of which he gave lectures on Legal Concepts, Sources and General Principles of EU law, Free Movement of Goods, Competition law and Intellectual Property law.
His PhD research project examined existing and proposed EU ‘Optional Instruments’ (OIs) in different fields of European law, including contract law, company law and intellectual property law (such as the proposed Common European Sales Law, the European Company and the Community trade mark, respectively). In general terms, the principal aims of his research were two-fold: First, to investigate the benefits and disadvantages of creating optional private law at European level as an alternative to harmonisation; and, second, to consider possible explanations for the apparently varied degree of ‘success’ of EU OIs already in existence, and what this could entail for those OIs that are currently being proposed by the EU legislator. Ultimately, William sought to determine whether and in what ways such ‘optional’ EU law provides a viable and desirable alternative to top-down harmonisation in the quest for greater uniformity in European private law.