Peter Whelan

Peter Whelan (born 1979) is a professor of law at the School of Law, University of Leeds.

A qualified New York Attorney-at-Law, Whelan conducts research in competition (antitrust) law and criminal law.

He published the first full-length monograph on the criminal enforcement of competition law with Oxford University Press.

Whelan studied at both Trinity College Dublin and St John's College, University of Cambridge.

In 2001 he was awarded a degree in law and French from Trinity College Dublin.

During this degree he participated in the Erasmus Programme and studied at the University of Poitiers in France.

In 2003, following an academic year teaching English in Harbin, China, he completed a master's degree in law at Trinity College Dublin.

He passed the New York Bar Exam in 2005 and then went on to complete a PhD in Law at St John's College, University of Cambridge.

While at Cambridge he was the Managing Editor and then Consultant Editor of the Cambridge Law Review.

From 2005 to 2010, Whelan was the Research Fellow in Competition Law at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law in London.

In 2010, he took up a lectureship in law at the University of East Anglia.

Since 2011 he has been the Managing Editor of Oxford Competition Law, which is operated by Oxford University Press.

He is a Member of the Council of the Society of Legal Scholars and is an elected member of the Senate of the University of Leeds.

Since 2012 he has been a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Antitrust Enforcement and World Competition.

In 2013 Whelan obtained a Certificate in Higher Education Practice from the University of East Anglia and subsequently became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

In 2013 he was promoted to senior lecturer in law.

That same year he took up an associate professorship at the School of Law, University of Leeds.

From 2013-2019 he was the Deputy Director of the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies.

In 2013 Whelan was tasked with writing a report for the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority which analysed whether Finland should introduce criminal sanctions to enforce its competition law.

The completed report was later presented to the Ministry of the Economy and Employment and the Ministry of Justice in Finland.

In requesting the Finnish Ministry of Justice to consider the arguments presented in the report, Director General Pekka Timonen of the Ministry of Employment and the Economy Labour and Trade Department stated that the report provided 'the basis for the justification of criminalising cartels and the justified need to do so from the aspect of the judicial system in matters related to competition'.

He acts as a Judge for the Undergraduate Awards and, since 2013, has been an Associate Member of the Centre for Competition Policy.

He has been a visiting professor at the Institute of International Trade and Law in Moscow, Russia, where he taught a course on contract law.

On two occasions he has delivered written and oral evidence on the enforcement of competition law to the New Zealand Parliament.

He has trained members of the Romanian judiciary in EU competition law and has presented his research at the National Economic Prosecutor's Office of Chile and to judges at the Competition Tribunal of Chile.

He was interviewed by the Verge on the implications of the European Commission's decision in its recent Google Search case and has been featured in the 'Academic Life' section of Jurista Vārds, Latvia's main legal periodical.

In 2014, he joined the Editorial Boards of the Romanian Competition Journal, the Journal of Financial Crime and the New Journal of European Criminal Law.

For his article ‘Cartel Criminalization and the Challenge of Moral Wrongfulness’, Whelan was shortlisted for a 2014 ‘Antitrust Writing Award'.

In 2016 Whelan was appointed as a Non-Governmental Advisor to the International Competition Network.

In 2017, he was promoted to a full professorship at the University of Leeds.

In 2019, he gave oral evidence to the Competition Law Review Committee, a body created by the Government of India to review its competition regime.

In 2021, he became a member of the United Nations Working Group on Cross-Border Cartels, which is operated by UNCTAD.

Whelan's work has been published in law journals such as Modern Law Review, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, and Cambridge Law Journal.

Whelan has presented his work in over thirty countries across six continents.

Whelan's work has received positive reviews from professors at Loyola University Chicago,

the University of East Anglia and Oxford.

Whelan has been shortlisted three times for an ‘Antitrust Writing Award’.

For his work on Director Disqualification Order, Whelan has been shortlisted for a 2021 Antitrust Writing Award.

For his publication ‘Competition Law and Criminal Justice’, Whelan was shortlisted for a 2019 ‘Antitrust Writing Award’.

In August 2020, Whelan became the Director of the Centre for Business Law and Practice.