Since Professor Joshua Karton joined the Law Faculty in July 2009, he has written a book published by Oxford University Press, earned two awards for his articles in leading international journals and won a Law Students’ Society teaching award. On April 15, Karton reached another career milestone: he was granted tenure at Queen’s Law.

“Reading my tenure application file was more meaningful than I ever expected,” he says. “I actually got a lump in my throat more than once, reading the nice letters from former students and from senior professors in my area whom I look up to!”

Now that Karton has reached this stage as a scholar and teacher, he is looking forward to working on larger-scale, longer-term research projects and developing a new course. His continuing work on a SSHRC-funded theoretical project on the role of the governing law in international arbitration is expected to provide material for his second book. As part of an international and interdisciplinary 11-member team, he will be conducting empirical research on the role of national cultures in international arbitration practice. This fall, while teaching as a visiting professor at the National Taiwan University College of Law, he will be piloting an international commercial arbitration class that will combine lectures with a lot of in-class role-playing and other exercises. “I hope that my time abroad will help me bring more of a comparative perspective to my teaching once I return to Queen’s,” he says.

During his 2015-16 sabbatical in Taipei, in addition to teaching courses on international arbitration and comparative contract law, Karton will be helping to organize an international arbitration conference and pursuing his ongoing research. He will also be collaborating with a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong on an empirical study of the impact of traditional Chinese cultural values on modern international commercial dispute resolution practices in four East Asian jurisdictions.

“I’ll be making research visits to China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan to conduct interviews, which will include a one-month stint next spring as a visiting professor at CUHK.” he says. “And I’ll also take advantage of the opportunity to improve my Chinese.”