Dr Gregory Ioannidis is an ‘international sports lawyer with experience in high profile anti-doping litigation, as well as experience in other regulatory and sport disciplinary matters, with particular emphasis on football law.’
Following working for the University of Buckingham, he joined Sheffield Hallam in January 2014 where he taught on the sports law module for the undergraduate course, whilst developing the Master’s Programme in LLM International sports law in Practice. The MA was launched in 2016 and has increased it’s take up significantly over the last 3 years from 5 to 25 students per cohort.
The course has gained a brilliant reputation due to its weekly classes with taught delivery in the form of Webex sessions despite being a distance learning course, in comparison to competitors who offer blended learning where they have a few weekends over the year where they attend taught sessions. The students range from mature students, practitioners, our own undergraduates alumni and even a QC who joined the programme last year. The courses’ niche subject matter has attracted a lot of attention with the students having the opportunity to practice in real life client situations, supporting academics with real cases. These shadowing opportunities have been instrumental to the courses success so far and has seen graduates go on to start flourishing careers. For example, graduate Hannah Pike was an undergraduate from Hallam’s Sports Science and Development programme and had no previous legal background experience. Despite this, Hannah excelled on the course and was inspired to do a law conversion course at the University of Sheffield. The concept of ‘Transforming Lives’ really shines through with this former student. Hannah said of her experience:
‘The Masters gave me the opportunity to truly learn about the practice of International Sports Law from top professionals within the field. The majority of classes were online and I was taught by enthusiastic experts from all over the world. I gained a passion for anti-doping law due to inspirational teaching and have to realise that this line of expertise is a job for life’
Gregory reflects on his own background, which started with a law degree before going onto study for a Masters in Sports Law, as something that could have been enhanced should he have had the opportunity to shadow and support real life cases as the course he leads on now does. The purely theoretical and distance learning course that only had a couple of teaching days in a year was whilst the first of its kind in subject, lacked in the opportunity for experience. Gregory then went onto do Doctorate in International Sports Law and has 18 years’ experience in legal representation and advice before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
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