Call for papers: Legal and economic issues of emerging (liability) risks and insurance
Deadlines for abstracts: 26 January 2026
The 21st Joint Seminar of the Geneva Association and European Association of Law and Economics (EALE) will be hosted by Jesus College, Cambridge on 18–19 June 2026.
Submissions are invited for papers dealing with the legal and/or economic implications of emerging liability and related risks for the re/insurance industry. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Adapting liability insurance: How actuarial models, underwriting strategies, risk assessment, and claims management processes need to evolve in response to emerging (liability) risks.
- A collective role for governments and re/insurers: Public-private partnerships, regulatory strategies, and collaborative approaches to managing large-scale or systemic liability risks.
- Social inflation, insurance claims, and tort law reform: Analysis of the drivers of social inflation, its effects across different insurance lines and geographies, and potential legal, regulatory, and industry responses.
- Generative AI and liability risks: The impact of AI-generated outputs on legal liability regimes; the insurability of AI risks; and implications for underwriting and claims.
- Liability for industrial contaminants: The role of tort law in framing liability for environmental and industrial harm; insurance coverage challenges under existing policies; and the future of liability insurance for pollution and environmental risks.
- Climate change litigation risks: Legal and economic implications of climate-related litigation for insurers, with a focus on directors & officers (D&O) and casualty lines, including perspectives from the ‘Global South’ group of countries.
- Cybersecurity litigation: Managing corporate liability for cyber incidents; evolving legal doctrines; and implications for cyber insurance and other financial lines.
- Liability for autonomous vehicles and systems: Legal and economic challenges of insuring autonomous technologies, including self-driving cars, drones, and autonomous or remotely controlled ships.
Timeline
- 25 January 2026: Deadline to submitting abstracts to se505@cam.ac.uk for review by a scientific board
- 1 March 2026: Annoucement of acceptance decisions
- 28 May 2026: Full papers due for submission; a selection of the papers from the seminar will thereafter be invited for peer-review publication in The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance
The seminar is sponsored by the Geneva Association and its local organiser is Dr Senara Eggleton (Jesus College, University of Cambridge).
