Julien Chaisse

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.

Twitter @Jchaisse / editor-in-chief @JWITBrill