Eleni Polycarpou
Partner, Head of the Art Litigation department, Co-head of the international arbitration team, Withers
Eleni is an attorney and arbitrator with specialist expertise in art law, international arbitration and commercial litigation. She also has a particular interest in personal property law and is familiar with art law concepts as they are used in different jurisdictions. Eleni has spearheaded an initiative promoting the use of arbitration in art related disputes and over the last year she has spoken at a number of forums in both the UK and Italy on the subject. She has also published a number of art related articles.
Eleni has long-standing expertise in commercial arbitration and 15 years' experience of an extremely broad range of art related disputes played out in a number of different jurisdictions, particularly under the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) rules. Eleni is acting for art galleries, museums, artists and collectors in all types of art related disputes and transactions and has dealt with high profile international title disputes, consignment, provenance and authenticity disputes. She is well versed in mediation and has a track record of achieving a successful settlement of disputes through mediation. She is a member of the London Court of International Arbitration and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators acting as counsel and taking arbitrator appointments on wide-ranging commercial arbitration matters, both on an ad-hoc and institutional basis. Eleni has acted as counsel in many high value commercial arbitration matters in a number of institutions, including LCIA and ICC. She was was appointed to the original Arbitration pool of CAfA in January 2020.
Eleni is admitted to practice in both England and Wales and the British Virgin Islands. Her practice also has a natural geographical focus in Cyprus and Greece, and she regularly acts for clients from those jurisdictions and with Russian and CIS clients holding interests through Cypriot companies. Eleni is a member of the Hellenic Law Association of London, Russia and CIS Arbitration Network, British Italian Law Association and the British Russian Law Association.
Eleni's educational background includes: Durham University, BA (Hons) Social Sciences and MA Politics (1993-1997) and College of Law (London) (1998-2000). Eleni is fluent in English, Greek and Italian.
Jurisdiction: U.K.