Established in 1985, the School of International Arbitration (SIA) is a centre of excellence for research and teaching of international dispute resolution. It is part of the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS) at Queen Mary University of London.

The founders of the School saw international dispute resolution as a stand-alone substantive subject rather than a side-discipline of civil procedure, private international law or comparative law. This view is now widely accepted and has inspired a number of institutions around the world to set up similar programmes. Today the School is acknowledged as the world’s leading postgraduate teaching and research centre on international dispute resolution.

Since its establishment, over 4,000 students from more than 110 countries have graduated from, and 50 PhD students have successfully completed their doctoral studies at the SIA. Many of our graduates are now successfully practicing arbitration around the world as advocates, in-house counsel, academics and arbitrators. Others serve international organisations, including UNCITRAL and the World Bank, or work for major arbitration institutions.

The School of International Arbitration is located in Queen Mary’s postgraduate law centre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the centre of legal London. Its key location facilitates support from the international arbitration community for our students including professional events, internships and mentoring.

The School’s goals are:

• Scholarship: To produce leading scholarship that advances the intellectual and theoretical development of the discipline of international adjudication and dispute resolution
• Education: To offer rigorous and innovative programmes for the global education of future generations of international dispute resolution experts
• Professional engagement: To engage with international dispute resolution practice and professional institutions and organisations. This includes our co-curricular practitioner seminars and the popular annual SIA & Freshfields lecture.
• Impact: to produce real-world impact by offering consulting services and advice to governments and non-governmental agencies that wish to develop a non-judicial settlement of dispute mechanism, as well as training for lawyers in private practice, in-house lawyers, judges, arbitrators and mediators.