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.

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.

Ezgi Uysal is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Private Governance (CEPRI), Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on sustainable public procurement, contract compliance and the enforcement of sustainability obligations in public contracts. She completed her PhD at the University of Turin in 2024 as a SAPIENS Early Stage Researcher, examining the enforcement of sustainability commitments during contract performance.

Ezgi currently conducts research within the Purchase Power – Sustainable Public Procurement through Private Law Enforcement (PurpLE) project, funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. Her work explores how private law enforcement mechanisms can strengthen sustainability commitments in public procurement. She has published on sustainability clauses, corporate sustainability due diligence, green public procurement, contract monitoring, and the European Green Deal.

Karolis is OCP’s Head of Europe working with the European institutions, country governments and civil society to improve public spending in the region. Driven by impact and that alone, he focuses on strengthening institutions and their public spending using openness principles. He is interested in how open contracting can help power sustainable transition in Europe. Karolis is a member of the European Commission Multi-Stakeholder Expert Group on eProcurement (EXEP) and he also co-leads the Open Spending EU Coalition – a community of open spending champions in the EU.

Before joining the Open Contracting Partnership, Karolis worked with Transparency International Lithuania, focusing on citizen engagement using ICT. He also contributed to global open data advocacy efforts, together with the Epsi platform, Open Knowledge International, Open Data Institute and others. From 2014 to 2016, he was a national researcher within the Open Government Partnership Independent Review Mechanism.

Karolis earned his bachelor’s degree in international law from the University of Westminster, UK and Master’s degree in European Union law from the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands.

Kirsi-Maria Magga is Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Lapland, specialising in public economic law. Her research focuses on public procurement, competitive neutrality, administrative and state aid law, contract law, security of supply, and the effectiveness of public expenditure. She works extensively in multidisciplinary research, particularly with economists, applying law and economics, empirical, comparative and legal doctrinal methodologies.

Kirsi-Maria is Principal Investigator for legal research in WaterFall – Safe Water for All, funded by the Finnish Strategic Research Council (2025–2030), and has held leadership roles in several major research projects on public procurement, security of supply and sustainable development. She also contributes to Finnish public policy, including recent government-commissioned work on competition neutrality and achieving savings through public procurement.

Roberto Caranta is Professor of Administrative Law at the University of Turin, specialising in EU and public procurement law, judicial review, environmental law and sustainable procurement. He has coordinated doctoral and international research programmes and directs a master’s programme in Public Procurement Management for Sustainable Development, organised with the International Training Centre of the ILO. He is also a member of the European Space Agency’s Procurement Review Board.

Roberto has led major European research and training initiatives, including the SAPIENS International Training Network on sustainability and procurement. He is a prolific author and editor on European procurement and administrative law, with recent work addressing transparency, sustainability and life-cycle costing in public procurement, public-private partnerships, effective judicial protection, and the liability of public authorities.

Willem Janssen is Endowed Professor of Public Procurement Law at the University of Groningen and Associate Professor of European and Dutch Public Procurement Law at Utrecht University. His research focuses on sustainable and responsible public procurement, including the role of procurement law in public-sector organisation, circularity, social value and the transition towards more sustainable economic models.

Willem leads and contributes to multidisciplinary research projects on circular procurement, land use and sustainability, and is affiliated with the Utrecht University Centre for Public Procurement and RENFORCE. Alongside his academic work, he advises on the development of Dutch procurement policy and regulation and chairs the Advisory Committee on the Proportionality Guide. He is also co-founder and co-host of BESTEK – The Public Procurement Podcast and regularly teaches and speaks on procurement, sustainability and European law.