Professor Helen Xanthaki, the first ever UK Professor of Legislative Drafting, and Academic Director of the Sir William Dale Centre for Legislative Studies will be leaving the IALS, at the end of 2015 to join the Faculty of Laws of University College London and take up the post of Director of the International Postgraduate Laws Programme jointly led by University College London and Queen Mary University of London. Professor Xanthaki joined the IALS in 1998 as a Fellow in Legislative Studies and worked with Sir William Dale at the Centre for Legislative Studies.
After Sir William Dale’s death Professor Xanthaki became the academic director of the Centre and proceeded to reform the Centre and its activities, which until then mainly centred around the annual legislative drafting course.
Within 10 years the renamed Sir William Dale Centre for Legislative Studies had become the world’s most prestigious academic institution carrying out work in the field of legislative studies with various professional courses, a master’s degree programme and a strong cohort of PhD students. Moreover, under the academic direction of Professor Xanthaki, the Centre completed 14 major funded programmes (funding coming from the EU, DFID, the World Bank amongst others) in areas related to legislative studies and EU criminal law.
The IALS wishes to thank Professor Xanthaki for her work and wishes her every success in her new post. 
Her academic presence at the IALS will certainly be missed and her work will be very difficult to emulate. Professor Xanthaki will complete her IALS duties for this academic year and will remain in the broad academic community of IALS as a Fellow.
From 1 January 2016 Dr Constantin Stefanou will be the new Academic Director of the Sir William Dale Centre for Legislative Studies. Dr Stefanou, Director of Taught Programmes at the IALS, has worked at the Centre for 15 years so the transition will be very smooth. The Centre will remain one of the key academic activities of the Institute which will, with the help of the extensive expert network built up over the past years, continue to excel with the full support of the Institute.