Corporate Law and Governance
Professor Irene-marié Esser is a Professor of Corporate Law and Governance in the School of Law at the University of Glasgow and Dean of the Graduate School, College of Social Sciences. Since 2020 she is an Extraordinary Professor at Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
Professor Esser acted as Director and Deputy-Director of Postgraduate Teaching and Co-Subject Head of Commercial Law at the School of Law, University of Glasgow from 2018 until 2022 as well as the Early-Career Co-Ordinator. She also served as a Professor Extraordinarius at the University of South Africa (UNISA) and was, until 2017, a Visiting Professor at the Open University, UK. She has been in academia for 15 years and was admitted as an Attorney of the High Court of South Africa in 2005. In South Africa she was Professor and Co-Subject Head of Corporate Law at UNISA until March 2013, when she relocated, with her family, to Edinburgh, Scotland. Irene-marié obtained her LLB at Stellenbosch University (2001, first in her class), her LLM at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland (2003) and her LLD at UNISA (2008). She was the Company Law Convener for the UK Society of Legal Scholars for 3 years, until 2021. She currently teaches Corporate Governance, Corporate Social Responsibility and Company Law at the University of Glasgow and supervises postgraduate research students in the United Kingdom and South Africa. Her research spans doctrinal and empirical approaches, covering the UK, EU and South Africa in the field of corporate governance, company law and corporate social responsibility.
Professor Esser is a member of the PRI Academic Forum as well as the Sustainable Market Actors Network & Daughters of Themis: International Network of Female Business Scholars. as well as the Sustainable Market Actors Network & Daughters of Themis: International Network of Female Business Scholars. Professor Esser acted as an External Consultant to the King IV Committee on Corporate Governance in South Africa. Reference has been made to her work in the King IV Report on Corporate Governance following her inclusive stakeholder protection approach. They quoted directly from two articles that she co-authored with other academics. Prof. Esser received the prize (with the co-author) for the best article published during 2016 in the Journal of Contemporary Roman Dutch Law for ‘Shareholder Protection in Terms of the Companies Act 71 of 2008’.
Professor Esser has presented a 3-5-day workshop at the University of Johannesburg on Board Governance since 2009. She is an examiner at ACCA on their South African Business law module. She is also on the editorial board of the European Business Law Review.
Prof Esser is part of the Corporate and Financial Law research group.
