Introduction

book pictureVirág Blazsek is an Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Law and Practice (CBLP) at the University of Leeds School of Law. She teaches commercial, corporate, and banking law and researches banking and financial regulation. She has been Co-Convenor of the Banking and Financial Services Law section of the Society of Legal Scholars, served as an External Examiner at King’s College London’s Dickson Poon School of Law, and been listed as a short-term legal expert at the International Monetary Fund. Before transitioning to academia, Virág practised banking and business law for over a decade. Her experience includes roles as Senior In-House Counsel (Team Manager) and member of the board of directors of a wholly owned subsidiary at OTP Bank, Budapest, as well as legal positions with Winston & Strawn LLP, Paris, and the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund, New York. She defended her doctoral dissertation summa cum laude in 2018. She is the author of Banking Bailout Law: A Comparative Study of the United States, United Kingdom and the European Union (Routledge, UK & US, October 2020), which is based on her dissertation. She has given numerous invited book talks, and her work is held by over 750 libraries worldwide (WorldCat; as of July 2025).

Virág has held visiting fellow positions at Emory Law, Atlanta, Georgia (Fall 2024) and the European University Institute Department of Law, Florence, Italy (Spring 2025). Before joining the Faculty at Leeds, Virág held academic and research roles at Central European University (2014–2018), Fordham University School of Law (2016), Columbia Law School (2017), Budapest Business School (2018), and The George Washington University Law School (2018–2019), where she was also a Thomas Buergenthal scholar and recipient of the Pro Bono Service Award for completing a project at the DC Superior Court’s Landlord-Tenant Legal Resource Center.

Virág was invited to lecture in the LLM in International and European Taxation program of ELTE Law, Budapest, for two consecutive academic years (2021–2023). She regularly serves as an ad hoc reviewer for law and economics journals and publishers. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence, Risk Regulation, Law, and Policy (Brill). She has successfully completed collaborative international research projects in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Spain, Italy, and Hungary. She has been a Michael Beverly Innovation Fellow twice (2022-2024) and is researching secondary FinTech centers and leading the development of the “Leeds Financial and FinTech Hub” (Project video available):

She is fluent in English, Spanish (DELE Superior), and Hungarian, and proficient in German (ZMP). She has also studied Latin (four years), French (three years), and Catalan (one semester).

QUALIFICATION