Speakers

Anne Davies is Professor of Law and Public Policy and a Fellow of Brasenose College. She studied at Oxford, completing the BA (winning the Gibbs and Martin Wronker Prizes) and the D.Phil. She was a Prize Fellow at All Souls College from 1995 to 2001, and the Garrick Fellow and Tutor in Law at Brasenose College from 2001 to 2015. From 2015-2020 she was Dean of the Oxford Law Faculty.

Professor Davies is the author of five books and numerous articles in the fields of public law and labour law. In public law, she has a particular interest in government contracts. Her D.Phil. thesis examined the phenomenon of contractualisation in the UK National Health Service from a public law perspective. She developed this research into a book entitled Accountability: A Public Law Analysis of Government by Contract which was published by Oxford University Press in 2001. Her book The Public Law of Government Contracts, a wider examination of public procurement and public/private partnership contracts from a public law perspective, was published by OUP in 2008. She continues to write about government contracts and public service delivery more generally, and chairs the Oxford POGO Club for the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford.

Christopher R. Yukins has many years of experience in public procurement law. He was for several years a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, where he handled trials and appeals involving bid protests and contract claims against the U.S. government.

He teaches on government contract formations and performance issues, bid protests, Contract Disputes Act litigation, and comparative issues in public procurement, and focuses especially on emerging public policy questions in U.S. procurement.

He is an active member of the Public Contract Law Section of the American Bar Association, serves on the steering committee to the International Procurement Committee of the ABA International Law Section, and previously served as the president of the Tysons Corner Chapter of the National Contract Management Association.

He is a faculty advisor to the Public Contract Law Journal, and has contributed pieces on procurement reform, international procurement, electronic commerce and information technology to a broad range of journals, including Washington Technology, Government Contractor, Legal Times, and Federal Computer Week. He has published on procurement reform in scholarly journals, including the Public Contract Law Journal, Georgetown Journal of International Law, and Public Procurement Law Review (United Kingdom).

Together with Professor Steven Schooner, he runs a popular colloquium series on procurement reform at The George Washington University Law School. In private practice, Professor Yukins has been an associate, partner, and of counsel at leading national firms; he is currently of counsel to the firm of Arnold & Porter LLP. He is an advisor to the U.S. delegation to the working group on reform of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Model Procurement Law, and he teaches and speaks often on issues of comparative and international procurement law.

Abby Semple, LL.B., Ph.D. is a consultant advising public bodies on strategic and legal aspects of procurement. Her main focus is on the environmental and social impact of public contracts and how these can be meaningfully addressed through the contracting process. Through her consultancy Public Procurement Analysis, Abby has managed complex tenders on behalf of public sector clients in the UK and Ireland, and developed policy and guidance at the EU level and in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United States. Her writing and speaking engages with academic and practitioner audiences, including over 80 presentations and training sessions throughout Europe and the world. Abby is the author of one of the first books on the 2014 EU Procurement Directives A Practical Guide to Public Procurement, published by Oxford University Press in 2015. Her academic writing can be accessed on SSRN.

Geo Quinot is trained in law, public administration and higher education. He is currently a Professor of Law in the Department of Public Law and the School of Public Leadership at Stellenbosch University, South Africa as well as Founding Director of the African Procurement Law Unit (APLU). He is also admitted as an Advocate of the High Court of South Africa.

Geo teaches administrative law and public procurement law in the Law Faculty and the School for Public Leadership at Stellenbosch University. He also regularly instructs public administrators in both administrative law and public procurement regulation. His research focuses on general administrative law, including a particular focus on the regulation of state commercial activity such as public procurement as well as on legal education. He has published widely in these areas.

He is the author, co-author and/or editor of eight book publications, the most recent of which are Public Procurement Regulation in Africa: Development in Uncertain Times, published by LexisNexis in 2020 and Administrative Justice in South Africa: An Introduction, the second edition of which was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. Quinot is a past editor-in-chief of the journal, Stellenbosch Law Review and the founding editor-in-chief of the open-access journals, African Public Procurement Law Journal and Ukumela: Journal of legal reasoning, writing and education. The latter two journals are the first of their kind on the African continent.

In 2012 and 2013 he served on a ministerial task team in the South African National Department of Health, focusing on the reform of health procurement systems in South Africa. In 2014 he completed an extensive research project for the South African National Treasury on the establishment of the Office of the Chief Procurement Officer and subsequently assisted that Office on reform of the South African public procurement regulatory regime and training senior public executives in supply chain management.

As an advocate, Quinot advises on matters relating to administrative law and especially public procurement law to both public buyers (organs of state) and suppliers to the state.