2023 Award Winner

The IALLJ is honoured to announce that Ms. Aleydis Nissen was the winner of the 2023 Marco Biagi Award for her paper “The Fifth Fundamental Labour Right in EU FTAs”.

Call for papers for the next Marco Biagi Award

Call for Papers for the 2024 marco biagi award

To stimulate scholarly activity and broaden academic interest in comparative labour and employment law, the International Association of Labour Law Journals announces a Call for Papers for the 2024 Marco Biagi Award. The award is named in honor of the late Marco Biagi, a distinguished labour lawyer, victim of terrorism because of his commitment to civil rights, and one of the founders of the Association. The Call is addressed to doctoral students, advanced professional students, and academic researchers in the early stage of their careers (that is, with no more than three years of post-doctoral or teaching experience).

• The Call requests papers concerning comparative and/or international labour or employment law and employment relations, broadly conceived. Research of an empirical nature within the Call’s purview is most welcome.
• Submissions will be evaluated by an academic jury to be appointed by the Association. Submitted papers should include an abstract.
• The paper chosen as the winner of the award will be assured publication in a member journal, subject to any revisions requested by that journal.
• Papers may be submitted preferably in English, but papers in French or Spanish will also be accepted. The maximum length is in the range of 12,500 words, including footnotes and appendices. Substantially longer papers will not be considered.
• The author or authors of the paper chosen as the winner of the award will be invited to present the work at the Association’s 2024 meeting which is to be announced soon on the website of the Association. Efforts are being undertaken to provide an honarium and travel expenses for the presentation of the paper. Until that effort bears fruit, however, the Association hopes that home institutional funds would be available to support the researcher’s presentation.
• The deadline for submission is 31 March 2024. Submissions should be sent electronically in Microsoft Word both to Lavoro e diritto at lavoroediritto@unife.it and to Frank Hendrickx, the President of the Association, at frank.hendrickx@kuleuven.be and his secretariat: iar@kuleuven.be

Website of the IALLJ: www.labourlawjournals.com

Complete list of Marco Biagi Award Winners

2013
Aline Van Bever (University of Leuven, Belgium), The Fiduciary
Nature of the Employment Relationship

2012
Diego Marcelo Ledesma Iturbide (Buenos Aires University,
Argentina), Una propuesta para la reformulación de la conceptualización tradicional de la relación de trabajo a partir del relevamiento de su especificidad jurídica

Special Commendation: Apoorva Sharma (National Law University, Delhi, India), Towards an Effective Definition of Forced Labor

2011
Beryl Ter Haar (Universiteit Leiden, the Netherlands), Attila Kun (Károli Gáspár University, Hungary) & Manuel Antonio Garcia- Muñoz Alhambra (University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain), Soft On The Inside; Hard For the Outside. An Analysis of the Legal Nature of New Forms of International Labour Law

Special Commendation: Mimi Zou (Oxford University, Great Britain), Labour Relations With “Chinese Characteristics”?
Chinese Labour Law at an Historic Crossroad

2010
Virginie Yanpelda, (Université de Douala, Cameroun), Travail
décent et diversité des rapports de travail

Special Commendation: Marco Peruzzi (University of Verona,
Italy), Autonomy in the European social dialogue

Association’s Award Prior to Naming as Marco Biagi Award

2009
Orsola Razzolini (Bocconi University, Italy), The Need to Go
Beyond the Contract: “Economic” and “Bureaucratic”
Dependence in Personal Work Relations

About Marco Biagi

Commemorating Marco Biagi cannot avoid bringing up a dramatic event. He was assassinated in his home town Bologna by the Red Brigades on 19 March 2002 at the young age of 51.

Marco taught labour law in several Italian universities, ending up as professor of Italian and Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations at the University of Modena, Italy.

Since 1986 he also was adjunct professor of Comparative Industrial Relations at the Dickinson College and member of the Academic Council of the John Hopkins University, Bologna Center, a true international figure.

Marco’s merits in promoting the international and comparative perspective of labour law are extraordinary. This not only refers to his many publications but also and in particular to his efforts in establishing a forum for international scholarly exchange, first in Bologna and later on in Modena. Already in the eighties of the last century, he organized international seminars on comparative labour law and industrial relations at the John Hopkins University, United States and in the nineties the annual summer school on the same topic. Thereby, Bologna became a centre of international scholarly debate not only for scholars but also for many young researchers from all over the world. Later on he became the organizer of the famous conferences in Modena where Marco succeeded to not only stimulate scholarly debates on all kind of topics of comparative labour law and industrial relations but also integrate in these debates practitioners: trade unionists, business people, and politicians. And we should add that all these events were impressive not only because of their intellectual quality but also because of Marco’s outstanding Italian hospitality.

Marco was a dedicated European. His contribution to the promotion of European labour law barely can be overestimated. Again this is not only shown by his many publications in this area but also by his efforts to directly influence the development of European labour law and the structure of the European labour market. In 1997, Marco was appointed as a representative of the Italian Government to the Committee for the employment and the labour market, and in 1999, he became the Vice President of the committee. His latest book, Quality of Work and Employee Involvement in Europe, published in 2002 by Kluwer, is somehow an account of his eminent task in this committee.

Marco, of course, was not only a promoter of labour law and industrial relations in a comparative and European perspective but also and foremost a leading figure in this field in the Italian context. And again not only his scholarly work in a narrow sense is characteristic for his approach but his involvement in shaping reality. He became President of the Italian Industrial Relations Research Association in 1994 and was appointed from 1995 as a special advisor to the Minister of Labour, Tiziano Treu, later on serving in the same capacity to Tiziano’s successors. He developed a far-reaching reform agenda which even after his death led to legislative amendments bearing his name. It was this reform activity which provoked his cruel assassination. He died for his conviction.

The Fondazione Marco Biagi which has been founded in his honour in Modena promotes research in continuation of Marco’s approach. And every year an international conference is held in commemoration of Marco, dealing with challenges for labour law and industrial relations. Thereby, Marco’s legacy is kept alive every year shared not only by established scholars but also by an ever-increasing number of younger researchers from all over the world.

[This text is taken from: Frank Hendrickx & Manfred Weiss in: Gamechangers in labour law, Bulletin of Comparative Labour Relations, Volume 100]