professor-julien-chaisse
Professor Julien CHAISSE
LLB & PhD (Aix-Marseille University, France) (1st class)
MPhil (Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Germany) (1st class)
LLM (University of Rennes, France) (1st class)
Member, Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb)
Professor

RGC Senior Research Fellow

Contact Information

Li Dak Sum Yip Yio Chin Academic Building – 6115
(852) 3442 6594
julien.chaisse@cityu.edu.hk

Research Interests

  • International Economic Law
  • Commercial and Investment Contracts
  • Special Economic Zones
  • Arbitration and Dispute Resolution
  • Cyberlaw (ICANN, domain names, trademarks)
  • Transborder Data Flows and Data Privacy Law
  • Vitivinicultural law

Julien Chaisse is Professor & RGC Senior Research Fellow at the School of Law, City University of Hong Kong. A leading scholar of transnational economic governance, he studies how law structures markets, technology and strategic interdependence across borders. He serves as Editor in Chief of the Journal of World Investment & Trade, is an Area Editor for the Cambridge University Press journal Data & Policy, and writes the bimonthly “Global Lawyer” column for Financial Times fDi Intelligence. He is listed among Stanford University’s Top 2 per cent Most Highly Cited Scientists in 2023, 2024 and 2025, and his work is cited by international tribunals and by domestic courts in multiple jurisdictions.

His research offers a unified account of how transnational governance is being reconfigured by digitalisation and strategic competition. Across trade, investment, arbitration and taxation, he examines how international treaties, domestic law and transnational norms define what counts as value, and how law allocates value across space when production, control and monetisation no longer align. Intellectually influenced by thinkers such as Foucault, Deleuze, Arendt and Girard, he approaches law as a market-making architecture of power: law does not merely regulate exchange, it creates the categories through which authority, legitimacy and conflict become actionable. A central theme running through his work is the struggle to locate and anchor value when economic functions are disaggregated and jurisdictions compete to secure control and returns.

He holds research affiliations including membership of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council Research Fellow Alliance (HKRFA), Senior Research Affiliate with the Centre for Digital Law at Singapore Management University (SMU CDL), membership of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Trade and Investment Council, and membership in the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN CEFACT) Working Group on Conflict of Laws in Critical Raw Material Value Chains. He is active in academic societies as a member of the Society of International Economic Law (SIEL) and its Asian International Economic Law Network (AIELN), and the American Society of International Law (ASIL) and its International Law & Tech Interest Group, and served on the
Committee for the Essay Prize of that Interest Group (2024 and 2025).

Alongside his academic work, he is actively engaged in policy and practice. He has contributed to World Economic Forum initiatives on data governance referenced by G7 ministers, advises private sector, governments, and international organisations, and has extensive experience in international dispute resolution. He currently leads major competitively funded research projects on digital arbitration, advanced semiconductor and AI governance, and quantum computing regulation.

Before joining City University of Hong Kong in 2019, he held academic and policy positions at the World Trade Institute in Switzerland, the University of Antwerp, Sciences Po Aix, and the Embassy of France in India. He has held visiting fellowships and professorships at institutions including Columbia University, the University of Oxford, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, National Taiwan University, the University of Melbourne, the University of Passau, Vienna University of Business and Economics, and the University of Tokyo.

Awards, Fellowships, and Distinctions

  • Stanford University Top 2% Most Highly Cited Scientists (2023, 2024, 2025), Elsevier/Stanford World’s Top Scientists ranking
  • Senior Research Fellowship (awarded 2025, tenure 2026 to 2031), Hong Kong Research Grants Council
  • Outstanding Research Award (2023), City University of Hong Kong
  • Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship (awarded 2021, tenure 2022 to 2023), Hong Kong Research Grants Council
  • OIV Award in Vitivinicultural Law (2021), International Organisation of Vine and Wine, International Jury
  • Smit Lowenfeld Prize (2020), International Arbitration Club of New York
  • Vice Chancellor’s Young Researcher Award (2018), The Chinese University of Hong Kong
  • Vice Chancellor’s Exemplary Teaching Award (2015), The Chinese University of Hong Kong
  • Research Excellence Award (2012), Faculty of Law, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
  • European Union Law Award, Prize for Best Doctoral Thesis (2008), University of Aix Marseille

Selected Publications

Articles in Law Journals and Other Scholarly Reviews

Monographs & Edited Books

Textbooks

Chapters in Books

Research Grants

  • ‘Making E-Awards Work: Legal Fixes and Tech Upgrades to Keep Hong Kong at the Forefront of Digital Arbitration’, principal investigator, Strategic Public Policy Research Funding Scheme, Hong Kong SAR Chief Executive’s Policy Unit (CEPU), RGC Ref No. 2025.A1.175.25D, 2026-2027, HK$987,000.
  • ‘Semiconductors, Quantum Computing, and AI: Pioneering the Future of Trade and Sustainability in International Economic Law’, principal investigator, Senior Research Fellow Scheme, Hong Kong SAR Research Grants Council (RGC), RGC Ref No. SRFS2526-1H01, 2026-2031, HK$8,000,000.
  • ‘The Black Box of Settlement Offers: Uncovering the Hidden Dynamics of Investor State Dispute Settlement’, principal investigator, General Research Fund (GRF), Hong Kong SAR Research Grants Council (RGC), RGC Ref No. 11613524, 2025-2027, HK$727,000.
  • ‘Domestic National Security Regulation and Foreign Investment’, co-investigator (with Christoph Herrmann), Germany-Hong Kong Joint Research Scheme, Hong Kong SAR Research Grants Council (RGC) and German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), RGC Ref No. G-CityU102/22, 2023-2025, HK$300,000.
  • ‘Redefining Global Governance: A Tax, Trade, and Investment Perspective’, co-investigator (with Irma Mosquera and Allison Christians), NIAS-Lorentz Programme, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2023-2025, HK$1,500,000.
  • ‘To Litigate or Not to Litigate at the World Trade Organization? A Comparative Investigation of the Determinants of Dispute Initiation at the WTO’, principal investigator, General Research Fund (GRF), Hong Kong SAR Research Grants Council (RGC), RGC Ref No. 11608122, 2023-2025, HK$1,300,000.
  • ‘The Tax Factor of the Global Trade War: Designing Better Digital Tax Rules’, principal investigator, Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship Scheme (HSSPFS), Hong Kong SAR Research Grants Council (RGC), RGC Ref No. 31000121, 2021-2023, HK$453,900.
  • ‘Anatomy of Hong Kong’s International Trade Law’, principal investigator, General Research Fund (GRF), Hong Kong SAR Research Grants Council (RGC), RGC Ref No. 11606820, 2020-2022, HK$999,600.
  • ‘The European Union at the Crossroads of Global Order (EUCROSS)’, co-investigator, Jean Monnet Network, led by KU Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, 2018-2021, HK$3,000,000.
  • ‘The COP and MOOT Project for Climate Change Education in Hong Kong’, principal investigator, Environment and Conservation Fund, EECA No. 1795, 2018-2020, HK$721,000.
  • ‘Towards a China-EU Bilateral Investment Treaty: Issues, Challenges and Directions’, principal investigator, General Research Fund (GRF), Hong Kong SAR Research Grants Council (RGC), 2016-2018, HK$914,440.
  • ‘International Investment Treaties and Arbitration across Asia’, co-investigator, Australian Research Council Discovery Project, DP140102526, 2015-2018, HK$2,000,000.
  • ‘Managing the Globalisation of Water Services in a World Affected by Climate Change: Regulatory and Economic Challenges’, principal investigator, Research Development Fund, World University Network, 2013-2017, HK$890,000.
  • ‘Consumer Policy in China: Protecting Citizens, Strengthening the Domestic Market and Building an Ecological Civilisation’, co-investigator, Macau SAR Research Grants Council, 2016-2018, HK$1,500,000.
  • ‘The Changing Paradigm of Economic Diplomacy in Asia’, principal investigator, Taiwan Collaboration Fund, Office of Academic Links, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2015-2016, HK$390,000.
  • ‘The Practice of Treaty Shopping in International Law’, principal investigator, IEEM Academic Research Project Grant, AECSRP, 2014-2015, HK$80,000.
  • ‘Hong Kong Foreign Direct Investment Profile’, principal investigator, supported by New Asia College, Chiap Hua Cheng’s Foundation Fund, in cooperation with Columbia University, Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, 2013-2015, HK$250,000.
  • ‘United States of America and China Trade Litigation in the WTO’ (我国入世以来利用WTO争端解决机制解决中美贸易争端的实践与经验研究), co-investigator, Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, Ref No. 12JJD790022, 2010-2012, HK$500,000.
  • ‘Do Bilateral Investment Treaties Increase Foreign Direct Investment Flows? Revisiting the Role of Legal Parameters in Economic Empirical Research’, principal investigator, supported by Vienna University of Economics and Business, Arbeiterkammer Wien, and the Cheng Foundation Fund of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Ref No. I12076, 2010-2014, HK$2,000,000.
  • ‘Regulatory Strategies of Sovereign Wealth Funds in the Making’, principal investigator, Earmarked Research Grant, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009-2011, HK$60,000.

Professional Publications