Edward J. Balistreri: Duane Acklie Chair of International Trade and Finance, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, United States. For over two decades, he has engaged in relevant policy debates as an academic, a research economist at the United States International Trade Commission, and a consultant. He has considerable expertise working with legal teams in the analysis of trade agreements and trade disputes. His research focuses on the formulation of theory-based numeric simulation models of economic policy. Balistreri’s models have been used to analyze a diverse set of policy topics including climate change and international trade. He has also contributed to the literature on structural estimation and empirical calibration of advanced models of industrial organization and trade. Prior to joining the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Balistreri held positions at Iowa State University and the Colorado School of Mines. Balistreri earned his master’s and doctorate degrees in economics from the University of Colorado-Boulder and his bachelor’s degree in economics from Arizona State University.

Axel Berger: Deputy Director (interim) at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) and Managing Director of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) Germany. He is a founding member of the G20 Trade and Investment Research Network (TIRN), a cross-country, independent network of trade and investment policy researchers. Axel holds a doctorate in political science from the University of Duisburg-Essen and a master’s degree from Munich Ludwig-Maximilians-University in political science, economics, and modern history. His research focuses on the design, effects, and diffusion patterns of international trade and investment agreements, with a focus on developing countries. Other areas of current research include the development effects of an international investment facilitation framework in the World Trade Organization (WTO), the impact of free trade agreements on upgrading within global value chains, and the role of the G7 and G20 in global governance. He teaches global political economy at the University of Bonn and regularly advises developing countries, development agencies, and international organizations on trade and investment matters.

Richard Bolwijn: Head of Investment Research, Investment and Enterprise Division, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). He is the Research Coordinator for UNCTAD’s annual flagship World Investment Report and for a range of other publications on investment and enterprise development. He was the lead author of WIR theme chapters on GVCs, International Tax, Corporate Nationality, the Digital Economy, and Special Economic Zones. Before leading the research branch, Richard was the head of the Business and Investment Facilitation section, which provides technical assistance to developing countries in the area of eRegulations (simplification of administrative procedures for business and investors), eRegistrations (automation of procedures and single investor windows), and iGuides (marketing of investment climate). Prior to joining UNCTAD in 2010, Richard was a senior manager in McKinsey & Company, advising corporate clients worldwide on strategy and business development. He also worked in the economics group of KPMG Consulting. Richard holds degrees in International Economics and Management from Bocconi University in Milan, and in International Relations from Groningen University in the Netherlands.

Julia Calvert: Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on trade and investment law, corporate governance, and economic development. She is particularly interested in issues of national policy autonomy under trade and investment agreements in low- and middle-income countries. She is the author of The Politics of Investment Treaties in Latin America (Oxford University Press, 2022), which examines the drivers of infringement and the reform of international investment agreements in Latin America. She has advised governments and international organizations on foreign policy and investment policy. She holds a master’s degree in international development and a Ph.D. in political science and political economy.

Manjiao Chi: Professor and Founding Director, Center for International Economic Law and Policy, Law School, University of International Business and Economics (UIBE), Beijing. His research focuses on international trade and investment law and policy, dispute settlement, global development, and cooperation. He is an author of numerous books and articles, a frequent speaker in international law conferences, and a founding editor of the Asian Yearbook of International Economic Law. He is or was Deputy Chair, Academic Forum on ISDS Reform; Deputy Chair, China International Investment Arbitration Forum; Executive Council Member, American Society of International Law; and Standing Committee Member, Chinese Society of International Law. He held or holds visiting professorship in many leading law schools across the world and delivered a course at the Hague Academy of International Law in 2021. He advises international organizations, governments, and private sectors on a range of international law issues and is experienced in international investment and trade dispute settlement, treaty negotiation, and trade policymaking. He holds BA, LL.M., and Ph.D. in law degrees.

Ali Dadkhah: Director and Principal of Dadkhah Consulting, a Research Associate with Ciuriak Consulting (Ottawa), and a Lawyer at Infinity Law (Victoria, BC). Ali’s expertise includes trade and economic development, with a particular focus in the interface between law and economics. In particular, Ali’s work has focused on service regulations and investment, including the development of better metrics to quantify the impact of trade agreements on services and investment. Ali has participated in several missions on behalf of the Global Affairs Canada for training, capacity building, and technical assistance in applied trade analysis and modeling; published widely as author and editor; and presented at academic, business, and official venues, including the WTO and UN ESCAP. Recently, he has participated in a project to develop an index to quantify the current level of practice concerning investment facilitation and the changes as a result of implementing an investment facilitation framework currently being negotiation in the WTO.

Ole Kristian Fauchald: Professor at the Department of Public and International Law at the University of Oslo where he has been coordinator for research on investment treaty arbitration at the PluriCourts Centre for the Study of the Legitimate Roles of the Judiciary in the Global Order since 2013. In addition, he holds a part-time position as Research Professor at the Fridtjof Nansens Institute, an independent foundation researching environmental politics and law. At these institutions, he has initiated and contributed to several interdisciplinary research projects in the fields of investment and environmental policy. Since he published his Ph.D. thesis on environmental taxes and trade discrimination with Kluwer in 1997, he has taught and published on issues of international trade law. He was coeditor in chief of eleven volumes of the Yearbook of International Environmental Law (Oxford University Press) from 2004. He holds degrees in law from the University of Oslo, has been employed at the Norwegian Ministry of the Environment, and has spent sabbatical years at Peking University and the United Nations University for Peace (Costa Rica).

Malebakeng Agnes Forere: Associate Professor, School of Law, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. She specializes in foreign investment law, intellectual property law, particularly patents, and copyright, which include the protection of indigenous knowledge. She has published extensively in accredited international listed journals. She is the sole author of the book titled The Relationship of WTO Law and Regional Trade Agreements in Dispute Settlement: From Fragmentation to Coherence (Kluwer Law International, 2015). She is a member of the African International Economic Law Network and the Society of International Economic Law. She has done consultancy works for local and international institutions such as the World Bank. Prior to joining the University of the Witwatersrand, she lectured various legal subjects at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She holds an LL.M. from the University of Essex, UK, and a Ph.D. (magna cum laude) from the University of Bern, Switzerland.

Yuka Fukunaga: Professor, School of Social Sciences, Waseda University, Japan. She teaches public international law and international economic law and has published a number of articles and chapters in the field of international trade and investment law. She is the winner of the Waseda Research Award in 2017. She is Co-Secretary of the Society of International Economic Law (SIEL), Executive Council Member of the Japan Chapter of the Asian Society of International Law (AsianSIL), Board Member of the Japan Association of International Economic Law, and Book Review Editor of the Journal of International Economic Law (JIEL). She is also a member of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) Panel of Arbitrators, member of the Japan Association of Arbitrators (JAA), and co-chair of the Japan Chapter of the Energy Related Arbitration Practitioners (ENERAP). She was Assistant Legal Counsel at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) (2012–2013) and an intern at the Appellate Body Secretariat, World Trade Organization (WTO) (2002). She holds an LL.D. (2013) and an LL.M. (1999) from the Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, University of Tokyo, and an LL.M. (2000) from the School of Law, University of California, Berkeley.

Florian Gitt: Researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS). Before joining IDOS, he studied economics at the University of Cologne and has worked in banking and as an assistant to a Member of the European Parliament. He is a Member of the Youth Organisation of the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Xiuli Han: Professor and Deputy Dean, Law School, Xiamen University, China. She is Headquarter Member of the International Law Association, Council Member of the Chinese Society of International Law, Council Member of the Chinese Society of International Economic Law, and Executive Council Member of the Chinese Society of WTO Law. Her research focuses on international economic law, and her two representative monographs, The Principle of Proportionality in WTO (in Chinese) (Xiamen University Press, 2007) and Legal Protection and Sustainability of Chinese Investments in Africa: Under the Concept of International Investment Rule of Law (Springer, 2022), are warmly received. She was visiting scholar at the New York University Law School, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, and Stellenbosch University, University of South Africa and Virginia University and was Executive Editor of the Journal of International Economic Law (Chinese) in the past five years. She received her LL.B. and LL.M. from Northeast Normal University in 1994 and 1997 and a Ph.D. in law from Xiamen University in 2006.

Simon B. C. Lacey: Senior Lecturer, Institute for International Trade, University of Adelaide, Australia. Prior to joining the Institute, he held the position of Vice-President Trade Facilitation and Market Access at Huawei Technologies, China, where he was responsible for monitoring, managing, and mitigating the biggest trade and investment risks facing the company internationally. He has worked in over thirty countries and provided training and advice in the areas of trade and investment policy to both sovereigns and the private sector. Simon spent four years advising the Indonesian Ministry of Trade on a broad range of issues in connection with the country’s membership of ASEAN, the WTO, and a number of preferential trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties. He obtained his bachelor’s in laws (lic. iur.) from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and an LL.M. from the Georgetown University Law Center in the United States. Simon’s current research interests focus on the nexus between international trade, technology, and geopolitics.

Jing Li: Associate Economic Affairs Officer, Division on Investment and Enterprise, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). She works on the annual World Investment Report and other policy analysis on investment issues. Prior to joining UNCTAD, she was Deputy Section Chief, Department of WTO Affairs, Ministry of Commerce, China. She has rich experiences in negotiation of free trade agreements at both bilateral and multilateral levels. She holds a master’s in Law degree from Tsinghua University, China.

Sophie Meunier: Senior Research Scholar, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and Co-Director of the EU Program at Princeton University in the United States. She is the author of Trading Voices: The European Union in International Commercial Negotiations (Princeton University Press, 2005) and The French Challenge: Adapting to Globalization (Brookings Institution Press, 2001) and winner of the 2002 France-Ameriques book award. She is also coeditor of several books on Europe and globalization, most recently Developments in French Politics 6 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020) and Speaking with a Single Voice: The EU as an Effective Actor in Global Governance? (Routledge, 2015). Meunier is Vice-Chair of the European Union Studies Association (2021–2023). Her current work deals with the politics of foreign direct investment in Europe, notably Chinese investment.

Manu Misra: Research Fellow at the International Relations Research Center, University of São Paulo (NUPRI-USP), and a Visiting Scholar at the BRICS Policy Center, Institute of International Relations (IRI), and Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Brazil. He is a former Postdoctoral Global Fellow at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) School of Law in São Paulo, Brazil. Specializing in foreign investment law and policy, he received his Ph.D. in legal studies (International Law & Economics) from Bocconi University Milan, Italy, and an LL.M. in Law & Economics from the University of Hamburg, Germany. He has been a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Procedural Law in Luxembourg and the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, Germany. He has also previously worked for the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, within the Government of India where he contributed to the drafting of India’s 2015 Model Bilateral Investment Treaty.

Zoryana Olekseyuk: Senior Researcher, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS). Her research focuses on economic (dis)integration, trade, FDI, and investment facilitation mainly for developing and emerging countries. Being an experienced Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modeler, she developed many innovative CGE models, for example, incorporating heterogeneous firms and FDI. In particular, she investigated the effects of the DCFTA between the EU and Ukraine; the annexation of Crimea; the WTO accession of Belarus; the impact of different trade agreements such as CPTPP, RCEP, and FTAAP; and the consequences of Brexit. She has contributed to many international research projects and regularly advises governments and international organizations such as the World Bank. Her research is published in leading journals such as World Economy, Empirica, Review of Development Economics, Economic Modeling, and the Journal of International Trade and Economic Development.

Christian Pitschas: Senior expert of the “Trade and Investment for Sustainable Development” project at the German Development Agency (GIZ) in Bonn. His work focuses on issues related to development and sustainability, arising in the WTO and international investment context. Prior to his current position, he worked as a trade lawyer in Geneva (2005–2018) and Brussels (1999–2005). He started his career as a clerk at the Court of Appeals in Berlin (1997–1999) and a research assistant at the law school of Freie Universität Berlin (1994–1999). He studied law in Berlin, Geneva, and Athens (GA, USA). He has written numerous articles and lectured at various academic institutions on issues of European and International Economic Law.

Rodrigo Polanco: Senior Researcher, Lecturer, and Academic Coordinator of Advanced Master Programmes, World Trade Institute (WTI), University of Bern, and Legal Adviser for Spanish-speaking jurisdictions at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law. He is also visiting professor at the University of Chile, cofounder and member of the board of Fiscalía del Medio Ambiente (FIMA), and lecturer and former postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luzern. He was Assistant Professor of international economic law and Director of International Affairs, the Faculty of Law of the University of Chile. He holds a bachelor and a master of laws from Universidad de Chile, an LL.M. in International Legal Studies from New York University, and a Ph.D. in law from the University of Bern, specialized in international investment law.

Michelle Ratton Sanchez Badin: Professor, Law School, Getulio Vargas Foundation (DireitoGV/FGV-EDESP), Brazil; researcher at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Research (CEBRAP), for the project entitled “Democracy and Law in Brazil”; Assistant Professor at FGV São Paulo School of Law (Brazil) and its Law and Development postgraduate program; Coordinator of FGV/SP Center of Global Law and Development; Co-coordinator of the WTO Chair in Brazil; Current director of the Red Latinoamericana de Derecho Económico Internacional and of the Brazilian chapter of the International Law Association; and founding member of the Society of International Economic Law (SIEL). She has a number of ongoing awarded research scholarships and is an author of numerous articles and books, including her recent book published by Cambridge University Press in 2017, entitled Reconceptualizing International Investment Law from the Global South.

Christilla Roederer-Rynning: Professor of Comparative European Politics, Department of Political Science and Public Management, University of Southern Denmark. Her research focuses on the transformation of European trading states and EU policies and policymaking. She is coeditor of Policy-Making in the European Union, 8th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2020), with Helen Wallace, Mark Pollack, and Alasdair Young, and of The EU and the New Trade Bilateralism (Routledge, 2019), with Finn Laursen. Her current research, “Passage to Bicameralism? Probing Europe’s Legislative Power,” deals with the evolution of EU legislative institutions and is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation.