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.