- Bolanle Adebola, "Rescue Decisions: A Proposal to Reform the Administration Procedure in England and Wales" INSOL International Academics' conference (San Francisco: March, 2015).
- Bolanle Adebola, "A Few Shades of Rescue: A Critical Assessment of the Corporate Rescue Concept", INSOL Europe Academics' conference, (Istanbul: October, 2014).
- Bolanle Adebola, "Transplant No. 2: Some Thoughts on the Reform of the Nigerian Insolvency Law", Colloquium on the Reform of Insolvency Law, (Pretoria: September 2014).
- Bolanle Adebola, "The Law of Insolvency in Nigeria: A Critical Analysis of the Present Legal Framework", NIALS - BRIPAN Roundtable (Abuja: May 2013).
- Bolanle Adebola, "The Agency of the Nigerian Receiver", INSOL Europe Academic Forum (Venice: September 2011).
- Bolanle Adebola, "Protecting the Minority? An Assessment of the Nigerian Insolvency System", INSOL Europe Academics' conference (Dublin: June 2010).
Bolanle Adebola
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Associate Professor
- Module Convenor and Lecturer for the following modules on the LLM programme (on campus and distance learning): International Commercial Arbitration, Corporate Governance, Corporate Finance.
- Lecturer on the LLB Research Placement Project
- Legal Practice Liaison Officer for the Centre for Commercial Law and Financial Regulation (CCLFR)
Areas of interest
Bolanle teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. She convenes Company Law, Legal Aspects of Corporate Rescue, and International Commercial Arbitration (accredited by the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators - CIArb). She also has teaching interests in International Corporate Governance, International Corporate Finance, Commercial Law, and Contract Law.Bolanle teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. She convenes Company Law, Legal Aspects of Corporate Rescue, and International Commercial Arbitration (accredited by the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators - CIArb). She also has teaching interests in International Corporate Governance, International Corporate Finance, Commercial Law, and Contract Law.
Postgraduate supervision
Bolanle welcomes doctoral proposals in her areas of specialisation. She particularly encourages proposals from candidates interested in exploring or applying an ontological-normative analysis of law within corporate, insolvency and commercial law.
Research centres and groups
Member of the Centre for Commercial Law and Financial Regulation (CCLFR)
Research projects
Bolanle's research examines corporate, insolvency and commercial law through an ontologically grounded normative analysis of law, informed by empirical and institutional insight where appropriate. Her work interrogates the foundational assumptions of legal regimes to uncover their constitutive nature and normative commitments, and evaluates legal theories, doctrine, institutions and regulatory design accordingly. Her research offers insights that align legal design and practice with those commitments.
She has made substantial contributions to research on pre-pack administrations in England and Wales, examining their regulation through comparative and normative lenses. Her long-standing position in favour of mandatory oversight was reflected in regulatory reforms introduced in 2021. The normative dimensions of this work developed into Justice-Driven Insolvency Law (JUDIL), an ontological and normative theory of insolvency law.
Bolanle also researches insolvency law in practice (ILIP), focusing on the regulation of insolvency practitioners and the ethical design of insolvency regulatory frameworks. Her work takes a global view of insolvency law, integrating insights from emerging economies, particularly Africa, into the global insolvency discourse. She founded the Applied Commercial Law Research Hub (ACLRH) to connect scholars with policymakers, and to translate research into structural and institutional reform.
Her work has been published in leading journals including the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Journal of Corporate Law Studies, Current Legal Problems, International Insolvency Review and Journal of Business Law, among others. She is also Contributing Editor (Insolvency) to the Encyclopaedia of Banking Law (LexisNexis) and is a regular speaker at leading scholarly and policy fora.
Background
Dr Bolanle Adebola is Associate Professor of Law, specialising in corporate, insolvency and commercial law. Her research examines these fields, asking fundamental questions about their nature and the values they should serve. Combining philosophical inquiry with real-world institutional and policy insight, her work informs the design and governance of insolvency systems within the wider corporate and commercial law framework, with a particular focus on justice, legitimacy and effectiveness.
Bolanle is actively involved in policymaking, advising national governments, regulators, judiciaries and professional associations on regulatory design and reform. She served as Co-Lead of the Working Group on Insolvency (2023-24), a reform project established by the Nigerian Bar Association Section on Business Law (NBA-SBL) and the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Committee (PEBEC). She has contributed to judicial training through the National Judiciary Institute (NJI), Nigeria, and the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges (NCBJ) in the United States. Her research has been funded by the British Council, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). She was awarded the University of Reading Research Fellowship (2022-23), delivered the Clive Schmitthoff Keynote at Kent Law School in 2023, and gave an invited Current Legal Problems public lecture in November 2025.
She is Founder and Convener of the Applied Commercial Law Research Hub (ACLRH) (formerly CLRNN); 1st Vice Chair of the Restructuring and Insolvency Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association Section on Business Law (NBA-SBL); and a Council Member of the Business Recovery and Insolvency Practitioners Association of Nigeria (BRIPAN). She is an AHRC grant reviewer and serves as reviewer for several leading journals. She is a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Bolanle contributes extensively to inclusivity in legal education and the academy. She co-organised the first academic and policy conference on insolvency law in Africa (2014); co-founded the Race Equity Network at the University of Reading and served as its Co-Lead from 2020 to 2023, remaining on its Steering Committee; led sections of the Race Equality Review (2021); and was part of the successful Bronze Race Equality Charter award (2023), in relation to which she remains on the Race Equality Implementation Team. As Diversity and Inclusion Lead at the School of Law, she inaugurated the Awarding Gap Review and contributed to the institutionalisation of Black History Month activities at both School and University Levels.
Academic qualifications
- PhD, University College London.
- LLM, University of Wales, Bangor.
- LLB, Olabisi Onabanjo University.
- BL, Nigerian Law School.
- GradICSA, Corporate Governance Institute.
- FHEA, Higher Education Academy.
Professional bodies/affiliations
- Associate, Business Rescue and Insolvency Practitioners Association of Nigeria.
- Member, Centre for Commercial Law and Financial Regulation (CCLFR).
- Member, National Assembly Business Environment Roundtable (NASSBER) Expert Network.
- Academic Member, International Association of Restructuring, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Professionals (INSOL).
- Academic Member, Insolvency Lawyers’ Association (ILA).
- Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
- Trustee, Emmanuel Scholars.
Selected publications
- Bolanle Adebola, "Proposed Feasibility Oversight for Pre-pack Administration in England and Wales: Window Dressing or Effective Reform?" (2015) JBL (forthcoming)
- Bolanle Adebola, "Conflated Arrangements: A Comment on the Company Voluntary Arrangements in the Proposed Nigerian Insolvency Act 2014" (March 2015) NIBLeJ, 2.
- Bolanle Adebola, "Common Law, Judicial Precedents and the Nigerian Receivership Procedure" (2014) 58 (1) Journal of African Law, 129–144.
- Bolanle Adebola, "Discretion or Obligation to Seek Directions: The Administrator and Rejected Proposals" (2013), 1 NIBLeJ, 3–13.
- Bolanle Adebola, "The Nigerian Business Rescue Model: An Introduction" (2013) 1 NJILS, 35-64 available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract id=2297824.
- Bolanle Adebola, "The Duty of the Nigerian Receiver to 'Manage' the Company" (2011) 8 (4) International Corporate Rescue, 248–254.
Presentations