Alastair Hudson is Professor of Equity & Law in the University of London.

Having acquired his A-levels and S-level (in the days before such things were doled out in cereal packets), Alastair studied for his LLB at King's College, University of London and was awarded the Jelf Medal on graduation in 1991. While an undergraduate, Alastair edited the Wig & Gavel (then the University of London student law journal), was part of King's College's UK championship-winning team in the Telders Mooting Competition at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, won the SJ Berwin travel scholarship to work with Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett in New York, captained a rugby team, and served on the student law society.

He won an Inns of Court Studentship from a joint committee of the Inns of Court and also a Hardwicke Scholarship from Lincoln's Inn, before taking the Bar Vocational Course at the Inns of Court School of Law, while at the same time co-writing with people from SJ Berwin & Co two books called Doing Business in Hungary and Doing Business in Czechoslovakia under the auspices of the Confederation of British Industry (published by Kogan Page).

He was called to the Bar in 1991 by Lincoln's Inn. Subsequently he won a Lincoln's Inn Pupillage Award and endured his pupillage at 24 Old Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, while simultaneously beginning his LLM at King's College London on a part-time basis with the help of a King's College postgraduate scholarship. The masters degree was taken part-time because he could not have afforded to study full-time: this was a time of not-inconsiderable penury spent in the beautiful buildings of Lincoln's Inn. During this period he became Managing Editor of the Personal Tax Planning Review and co-authored Rollover Relief for Business Assets with Andrew Thornhill QC and Timothy Lyons QC for Key Haven Publications.

Due to personal circumstances beyond his control he left 24 Old Buildings after the twelve months of his pupillage and took up a long-standing job offer with Citibank NA, studying on the bespoke MBA-style programme organised by Citibank for its management associates while working as a lawyer in the derivatives department and then as an analyst in the "global finance" department. During this period he completed his LLM (doing revision and examinations by taking his annual leave) before being headhunted by Goldman Sachs to work in their legal department covering derivatives business. In 1993 he also studied a course at the British Institute of Psychoanalysis in the fundamentals of psychoanalysis.

From 1992 to 1997 Alastair also worked on a pro bono basis for Paul Boateng MP managing his Parliamentary office and writing the Labour Party's policy on legal and related constitutional affairs (shadowing the Lord Chancellor's Department). During this time he wrote speeches and advised on policy for a number of Labour front bench politicians. In 1995 he was selected to fight the Beaconsfield constituency by the local constituency Labour Party against Tim "cash for questions" Smith at the 1997 General Election. In his own defence he is keen to establish that Beaconsfield was one of the half dozen safest Conservative seats in the country, which even Tony Blair had failed to win in 1982. He worked hard, did his best for those local people long-ignored by the incumbent Tory MP, and then secured an effective 29% swing to Labour in May 1997. Nevertheless he failed to win in a landslide - he is concerned that this may yet prove itself to have been the story of his life.

During 1994 he began lecturing at King's College London on a part-time basis, having already begun lecturing at weekends at Holborn Law College (during which time he edited Equity & Trusts - Revision Workbook for Holborn Law Tutors). Some time around this time he also began to serve as an editor for Current Law Monthly Digest - a role he maintained until 2004 when information technology made his work of digesting a very wide range of cases obsolete.

In 1995 Alastair left Goldman Sachs and recommenced private legal practice at Hardwicke Chambers and then subsequently in chambers at 2 Paper Buildings. During this time he began lecturing full-time at King's College London. In 1996 he published the first edition of The Law on Financial Derivatives with Sweet & Maxwell, a ground-breaking book which examined the legal issues surrounding the practice of the international financial derivatives market. Shortly after the publication of this book he was invited to join the editorial board of Palmer's Company Law, published by Sweet & Maxwell, in the areas relating to the issue of securities and latterly open-ended investment companies.

Alastair had also combined his political activities with a great interest in the plight of the homeless in London. The most evident symbol of a society rotten at the core is the discarding of its citizens to sleep on its payments. He worked on an ad hoc basis with The Big Issue, writing his first article for them in their second issue in 1992 and giving legal and other advice to Big Issue vendors at their regular Saturday morning meetings at St Martin's in the Fields. Latterly he was appointed trustee of "Law for All". This work fed into a range of activities which culminated in the writing of The Law on Homelessness, published by Sweet & Maxwell in 1997. This work, while now longer public is nevertheless ongoing.

After the General Election and having published The Law on Homelessness in 1997, Alastair ceased working for the Labour Party and terminated private legal practice having taken the decision that he wanted to focus his energies on being a full-time academic - both teacher and author. So, in September 1997 he took up the post of Lecturer in the Department of Law at Queen Mary & Westfield College, University of London. While working at Queen Mary he was promoted first to Senior Lecturer in 1999 and then to Reader in 2001, serving as Senior Tutor, Chair of the Staff-Student Liaison Committee, Chair of the Undergraduate Affairs Committee, and even "Deputy Head of Department" en route.

He has published a number of books while on the faculty at Queen Mary, University of London.

• The Law on Financial Derivatives (Sweet & Maxwell, 1998, 2nd edition)
• Principles of Equity & Trusts (Cavendish Publishing, 1999)
• Swaps Restitution and Trusts (Sweet & Maxwell, 1999);
• Towards a Just Society (Pinter, 1999)
• The Law on Investment Entities (Sweet & Maxwell, 2000)
• Equity & Trusts (Cavendish Publishing, 2001, being a greatly enlarged edition of Principles of Equity & Trusts)
• Understanding Equity & Trusts (with a new edition in 2004, Cavendish Publishing, 2001)
• The Law on Financial Derivatives (Sweet & Maxwell, 2002, 3rd edition)
• Equity & Trusts (Cavendish Publishing, 2003, 3rd edition)
• Understanding Equity & Trusts (Cavendish Publishing, 2004, 2nd edition)
• The Law of Trusts, with Geraint Thomas (Oxford University Press, 2004)
• Equity & Trusts (Cavendish Publishing, 2005, 4th edition)
• The Law on Financial Derivatives (Sweet & Maxwell, 2006, 4th edition)
• Equity & Trusts (Cavendish Publishing, 2007,5th edition)
• Palmer's Company Law (Sweet & Maxwell) Part 5 "Issue of Securities" and Part 5A "Open-ended investment companies" as part of that publication's editorial board since 1996/97
• Understanding Equity & Trusts (Routledge-Cavendish, 2008, 3rd edition)
• Securities Law (Sweet & Maxwell, 2008).

There have also been four collections of essays to which Alastair has contributed and which he has edited which were culled from conferences which he had organised:

• Credit Derivatives: legal, accounting and regulatory issues (Sweet & Maxwell, 1999)
• Modern Financial Techniques, Derivatives and Law (Kluwer International, 2000)
• New Perspectives on Property Law, Obligations and Restitution (Cavendish Publishing, 2004)
• New Perspectives on Property Law, Human Rights and the Home (Cavendish Publishing, 2004).

Alastair was appointed Professor of Law in 2004, aged 35.

In 2008 Alastair was awarded UK Law Teacher of the Year, he was award a National Teaching Fellowship by the Higher Education Academy and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

{A complete list of publications is available by clicking here.}

{A complete curriculum vitae is available by clicking here.}