Lilian is a legal theorist and corporate responsibility scholar.

Lilian has law degrees from the University of Edinburgh (LLB Honours), London School of Economics (LLM) and the University of Glasgow (PHD). Lilian holds academic prizes and scholarships from the three institutions, including the Lord Cooper Memorial Prize (Edinburgh University), the Derby-Bryce Prize in Law (University of London) and the Adam Smith Research Foundation Doctoral Scholarship (Glasgow University).

Prior to her PhD, Lilian worked as an Analyst in the public sector, and, then, as an Analyst and then Associate at Goldman Sachs International (GSI).  

Lilian grew up in the Shetland Islands. She attended Aith Junior High School and the Anderson High School. Lilian retains a strong interest in island culture and land economy, and goes home regularly.

Lilian is a legal theorist and governance scholar, interested in progressing debates about ‘the corporation in society’, law and culture, and law and political economy. 

Lilian uses legal-theoretical and interdisciplinary research methods to study the governance, liability and accountability of business actors, particularly multinational companies and investors.  This research considers (and also creatively reconsiders) the design of domestic, regional and transnational institutions for the responsibilisation and ecologisation of corporate actors, commonly thematised as corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate sustainability, and regulatory governance.

Previous publications have sought to better understand the dissonance between corporate impactfulness and reflexivity, amidst complex harms (ie, intergenerational harm, diffuse and historic harms). They refine analysis of the tensions that can form between differently incentivised actors in decentralised governance, and how this can translate into difficulties with regulatory effectiveness and/or corporate accountability.

Lilian's recent research considers the terms of ‘a new social contract with business,’ a framework that seeks to mobilise a new era of legal initiative to address contemporary challenges, particularly inequality and the environmental crisis. 

This ambition continues in a new arts-law project, for 2023, funded by the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF), called ‘In the company of Dada’. The project creatively thinks about regulatory cultures, suited to the post-neoliberal age, whilst exploring themes of economy and society, law and tranformation, law and modernism.

List by: Type | Date

2021.   University of Glasgow Research Funds (COVID-19 reboot grant). £4,000.

2020.   Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF), Small Groups Flexible Research Grant. £4,900. (Project: In The Company of Dada). 

2017.   Society of Legal Scholars (SLS), Small Projects and Events Fund. £2,200. (Project: On the Constitution of the Debt State).

2009.   Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). AHRC Collaborative Research Training Scheme.  £2,000 (Project: The public in law).

2009.   University of Glasgow New Initiatives Fund.  Award to support workshop and invite speakers.

Research students under supervision

Katharina Stoll - 'Money Laundering and Art – A critical Analysis and Evaluation of Case Studies and Laws and Regulations'

Paola Alarcon Lopez - On Microfinance and feminist jurisprudence

Corporate Responsibility and the Law (LLM, convener)

Corporate Governance (LLM)

Law and Political Economy (LLB, Honours)

Jurisprudence (LLB)