We are delighted to announce registration for a two-day ECR conference, “Competition Law as a Guiding Discipline for the Digital Economy”.
The conference will take place on November 12-13 at the University of Glasgow, Advanced Research Centre, Room 237BC. The event will feature an opening keynote by Professor Viktoria Robertson (WU Vienna, The Competition Law Hub), a practitioner panel on Competition Law and AI, and presentations by up-and-coming competition scholars regarding various aspects of competition law engagement with the contemporary digital markets & ecosystems.
The conference is inspired by the economic and technological developments of recent decades that increasingly require multi-disciplinary assessment to support well-functioning markets and deliver societal benefits. Alongside maintaining a robust competitive process, such developments would benefit from a comprehensive approach, inter alia, to ensure effective consumer protection, overcome IP-related challenges, guarantee data/privacy protection, aid industrial and AI development, promote sustainability and support (national) democracies. While contemporary competition law often internalises these challenges, it can also play a broader role in fostering and guiding effective multidisciplinary approaches that could effectively regulate digital space for the benefit of wider society.
As a guiding discipline, competition law analysis can play three important roles for contemporary digital economies. First, it can act as a “signpost at the crossroads” by identifying market and ecosystem failures and/or segments that require regulatory intervention. Next, where challenges of the digital space require multi-disciplinary solutions, it can complement other areas of law by providing an avenue for circumstance-tailored interventions. Finally, it can protect both market competition and related non-competition interests where other fields of law cannot reach, or additional regulation is considered counter-productive to beneficial market and societal outcomes.
The conference brings together competition academics, practitioners and up-and-coming scholars whose work considers competition law from the above-mentioned perspective. Presentations will cover a wide range of topics, including the relationship of competition law with the (digital) press and media sector, creating fair and inclusive digital marketplaces for creators and publishers, ensuring openness, accessibility and competitiveness of markets and ecosystems in the age of AI, involvement of competition law in the design and operation of regulatory sandboxes, deploying conventional and non-conventional (enforcement) tools to support the robustness of digital markets, and using competition law to support democracy in digital space.
The format includes keynote speeches, presentations by early career scholars (ECRs), and dedicated time for discussion with academics and practitioners. While primarily designed for ECRs, the event will interest any competition law enthusiast pursuing interdisciplinary research and wanting to explore multi-dimensional approaches to the challenges posed by the development of the digital/AI markets and ecosystems.
You can access the full conference program and further details here. In case of questions, please contact ECR-CLC-2026@glasgow.ac.uk
Conference attendance is free, but registration is required. To attend the event, please register here.
We look forward to seeing you in Glasgow!
