Simon Deakin

Director of the Centre for Business Research (CBR)
Fellow (Economics & Policy)
Fellow of Peterhouse

MA, PhD (University of Cambridge)

Research interests

The study of corporate governance from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective; economic and sociological theories of law; empirical studies of the effects of legal change; doctrinal legal analysis in the areas of company, employment and private law; relations between shareholders and directors; human resource management and employment contracting; inter-firm relations; corporate insolvency; corporate social responsibility.

Simon Deakin is a member of the Economics & Policy subject group.

Professional experience

Professor Deakin is the Director of the Centre for Business Research (CBR), as well as a Yorke Professorial Research Fellow at the Faculty of Law at Cambridge. He specialises in the economics of law and empirical legal studies, with particular reference to labour law, private law, and corporate governance. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and has received the ECGI and Allen & Overy prizes for his research on corporate governance. He has carried out consultancy and contract research for numerous governments, international organisations, companies, business associations, trade unions and NGOs. He has acted as a consultant for a number of transnational organisations, national governments, corporate clients, and trade unions. Between 1999 and 2001 he provided research and advice for the DTI-sponsored Company Law Review in the UK and in 2002 he contributed to the work of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation established by the International Labour Organisation. He is a founder member of the Institute of Employment Rights, London, and a member of its executive committee. In 2002 he became a member of the Independent Commission of Inquiry into Drug Testing at Work, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Professor Deakin is one of the editors of the British Journal of Industrial Relations.

Previous appointments

Prior to taking up his current position, Professor Deakin taught in the Faculty of Law at Cambridge for 11 years, where he is still Yorke Professorial Research Fellow. He has also taught in the Universities of Chicago, London, Nantes and Melbourne. In 1994 Simon Deakin was one of a number of Cambridge-based academics who set up the Centre for Business Research (CBR), of which he is now Director.