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 and RGC Senior Research Fellow at City University of Hong Kong School of Law. His interdisciplinary research links international economic law, political theory, political economy, technology and dispute resolution. He is Editor in Chief of the Journal of World Investment & Trade, Area Editor of Data & Policy, and writes the bimonthly “Global Lawyer” column for Financial Times fDi Intelligence. He has been included in Stanford University’s Top 2% Scientists list for 2023, 2024 and 2025; his work has been cited by international tribunals and domestic courts.

His academic service includes two elected roles: Vice Chair of the American Society of International Law’s International Law & Technology Interest Group since 2026, and elected member of the Steering Committee of the Academic Forum on Investor State Dispute Settlement since 2024. He also chairs the Asia Pacific FDI Network, serves as Hong Kong’s delegate to the Asia WTO Research Network, and sits on the advisory board of the Asian Academy of International Law.

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 transnational norms define value and allocate it across jurisdictions when production, control and monetisation no longer align. Influenced by thinkers such as Foucault, Deleuze, Arendt and Girard, he treats law as a market making architecture of power. Law does more than regulate exchange; it creates the categories through which authority gains legitimacy and conflict becomes actionable. The recurring concern is how to secure value when economic functions split across borders and jurisdictions compete for control and returns.

His research has had policy impact in Hong Kong through advice to the Law Society of Hong Kong Committee on RCEP, and internationally through work on digital assets, cross border data disputes and FDI and rusted data flows. His academic publications and contributions to World Economic Forum reports, including ‘Overcoming Barriers to Cross Border Data Flows,’ have informed Data Free Flow with Trust; the G7 Digital and Tech Ministers used that report to advance the initiative and support the creation of the Institutional Arrangement for Partnership. His digital law work covers UDRP and URS domain name disputes, ICANN related matters and ICANN’s review of rights protection mechanisms for gTLDs.

For two decades, he has advised companies, governments and international organisations on treaty negotiations and domestic law reform in more than 30 jurisdictions. He has adjudicated more than 50 transnational disputes. He is a member of Hong Kong’s Board of Review and is included on the European Union’s List of Candidates Suitable for Appointment as Arbitrators. His appointments include DIAC, SIAC, SHIAC, HKIAC, ADNDRC, AALCO and XAAC, where he serves as Chief Expert for its 2026 internationalisation initiative. He has served for the past seven years as a judge at the Asian Legal Business Hong Kong Law Awards.

His core research affiliations are the Hong Kong Research Grants Council Research Fellow Alliance, the World Economic Forum Trade & Investment Council, and the UN Centre for Trade Facilitation & Electronic Business Working Group on Conflict of Laws in Critical Raw Material Value Chains. He is also Senior Research Affiliate at Singapore Management University’s Centre for Digital Law and Fellow at the Information Society Law Center at the University of Milan.

Before joining CityUHK, he held posts at the World Trade Institute (Switzerland), University of Antwerp (Belgium), Sciences Po Aix (France) and the Embassy of France in India, with visiting appointments at Columbia, Oxford, Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, Melbourne and 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

  • ‘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.
  • ‘Making E-Awards Work: Legal Fixes and Tech Upgrades to Keep Hong Kong at the Forefront of Digital Arbitration’, principal investigator, 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.
  • ‘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.

 

Op-Eds, Press Commentary, and Professional Publications