Martin Trybus read law at the Free University of Berlin (Referendarexamen 1994) before completing his studies for a LL.M. in Business Law (1995) and for a Ph.D. (1997) at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He qualified in Germany (Assessorexamen 1999), having also completed a stage with the European Commission in Brussels (1999), before starting as a lecturer at the University of Nottingham (2000). He was visiting scholar at George Washington University Law School in Washington DC (2003), at the University of Cape Town (2004), and visiting fellow at the University of Utrecht (2004). An AHRC Research Leave Award (2003-2004) led to his European Union Law and Defence Integration (2005). At the beginning of his Senior Lectureship at the University of Sheffield (2006) he was seconded as Senior Adviser to the SIGMA programme of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris where he coordinated a number of major studies on public procurement in Europe financed by the European Commission. Professor Trybus joined Birmingham Law School in 2007. He served on the Procurement Review Board of the European Space Agency (ESA) 2010-16 and again from 2020 and was Senior Research Fellow with RAND Europe 2014-16. In 2021 he was appointed Visiting Fellow at the University of Utrecht. 2017-21 Professor Trybus coordinated a Marie Skłodowska Curie (Horizon 2020) Innovative Training Network on the EU Trade and Investment Policy (EUTIP) 2021-2025 is Director of Training on another such Network on Sustainability and Procurement in International, European, and National Systems (SAPIENS NETWORK).

The research of Martin Trybus aims to make a contribution to the understanding and development of the Law of the European Union, especially its economic and constitutional aspects, to establish ‘EU Defence and Security Law’ as a separate legal subject, and to contribute to the understanding and development of public procurement regulation and policy in general and EU public procurement law in particular.

He is the author of three monographs (‘European Defence Procurement Law’, ‘European Union Law and Defence Integration’, and ‘Buying Defence and Security in Europe’) and seven edited collections. He is currently working on research projects relating to the use of public procurement to promote the participation of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises, national security in EU law after the Defence Package, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.  

Listen to Professor Trybus' 2009 inaugural lecture 'The Legal Foundations of a European Army'.