Profile

Professor of Law.

Education

LLB(Hons), DipLP (Aberdeen), LLM (Edinburgh), PhD (European University Institute)

Professor Paterson trained as a solicitor in the Office of the Solicitor to the Secretary of State for Scotland before pursuing an academic career. After studying at the EUI, Florence, Italy, he was a Research Assistant at the Centre de Philosophie du Droit, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, where he worked principally on the Governance Project with the Forward Studies Unit of the European Commission. He was Senior Lecturer and then Reader at the University of Westminster between 1998 and 2004 when he joined the University of Aberdeen as a Reader. He was appointed Professor of Law in August 2011. He has previously been co-director of the Centre for Energy Law, Acting Head of the School of Law and University Vice-Principal for Internationalisation. He co-ordinates Aberdeen's involvement in the North Sea Energy Law Programme (a joint LLM with the Universities of Copenhagen, Groningen and Oslo).

His research has covered systems theory, the regulation of risk, governance in the EU, corporate governance and energy law. He has been involved in a number of international projects in research, teaching, training and capacity building, has provided consultancy to international organisations and expert advice in an international arbitration. He is series editor (together with Professor Julian Webb) of the Law, Science and Society series published by Routledge-Cavendish. The third edition of Oil and Gas Law in the UK: Current Practice and Emerging Trends (co-edited with Greg Gordon and Emre Usenmez) was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2018.