From the Chairs – Maritime and Transport Law Committee – June 2022

Corina Song and Johannes Grove-Nielsen

We have now passed the halfway point of our two-year term.

Notwithstanding the lack of in-person events, we have still been extremely busy with our Committee affairs and projects. We are now in the final stages of production of our Committee’s Commemorative Book. After reaching out to many of you and collating quotes, historical information and photographs, having numerous discussions with the authors and reviewing numerous drafts, we are now considering the final draft, which looks very promising. This Commemorative Book was launched at the Mid-Term Conference in Singapore in June, and we hope that you will enjoy the walk down memory lane.

We are also in the final stages of preparing for our first post-pandemic, in-person conference in Singapore. The registration numbers are encouraging. We have an exciting programme planned for all of you and we hope to meet or reconnect with many of you in Singapore.

We are also preparing for our joint conference with the AIJA, which will be held in Valencia at the end of September, as well as the IBA Annual Conference 2022 in Miami in November.

We are also pleased to report that notwithstanding the pandemic, membership of our Committee has in fact grown from 555 when we took over in January last year to 634 in March this year. This bears testament to the importance of networking and maintaining contacts with our colleagues across the globe, even during a pandemic. The world of shipping does not stop even in a pandemic.

All the above activities would not have been possible without the support of our officers, for which we are grateful.

We have been fortunate to be able to harness technology over the past two years. Even as the world was largely operating under a lockdown mode, we have at least been able to stay connected via our various virtual events and our newsletter. In this connection, we are grateful to our publications team, made up of Tom Belknap and Bruce Paulsen, without whom you would not even be reading this edition of the newsletter! We are pleased to note that they have put together another interesting collection of articles for this edition.

Of course, nothing can compare with in-person contact and, in this connection, we are both excited that the world is now emerging from the pandemic and that we are all now able to resume our travels again. So, we hope to see you all in Singapore, Valencia and Miami!

Finally, even as we all celebrate the resumption of normal activities in our daily lives, let us not forget our colleagues in Ukraine who are now into the fourth month of hostilities with Russia. We continue to keep all our Ukrainian friends in our thoughts and prayers, and we hope to be able to welcome them back at one of our in-person events in the not-too-distant future.

Best,
Corina and Johannes