Joanna Lam

Joanna Lam serves as Professor MSO at the Centre for Legal Studies in Welfare and Market (WELMA) and Head of the Study Hub for International Economic Law and Development (SHIELD) at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of World Investment & Trade alongside Julien Chaisse.

Her educational background includes a degree from Harvard Law School and doctoral and habilitation degrees in juridical sciences. Lam is a licensed attorney-at-law who previously held visiting appointments at prestigious institutions including Harvard Law School, UNIDROIT, and UC Berkeley School of Law as a Fulbright Fellow.

Lam's research spans several interconnected domains within international legal frameworks. Her primary expertise lies in International Economic Law, International Commercial Contracts, and International Arbitration, with recent focus on investor obligations, energy sector contracts, hybrid arbitration processes (arb-med, med-arb), and transparency standards in trade and investment disputes. Her scholarly work explores the intersection of law, language, and interpretation within international legal contexts, examining how linguistic elements shape legal reasoning and decision-making in cross-border disputes.

Her publication portfolio includes the monograph Legal Interpretation in International Commercial Arbitration (Routledge 2014), and edited volumes such as Establishing Judicial Authority in International Economic Law (Cambridge University Press 2016) and Language and Legal Interpretation in International Law (Oxford University Press 2022). Her articles have appeared in leading journals including the Journal of International Economic Law, Leiden Journal of International Law, and Journal of International Arbitration.

• habilitation in juridical sciences (2017)

Lam has supervised three PhD projects to completion, served as chair of assessment panels and reviewer for three additional PhD theses, and advised two postdocs who secured funding from the Carlsberg Foundation and Independent Research Fund Denmark. Her research has received substantial support from the Fulbright Foundation, Carlsberg Foundation, Dreyer Foundation, Harvard University, and the Ministry of Higher Education and Science. Currently, she serves as Principal Investigator for the ENERGIZE project (Re-Shaping International Investment Law for the Green Transition), a collaboration with the University of Hamburg and University of Warsaw funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark.

As Head of SHIELD, Lam leads research initiatives focused on international economic law and development. She coordinates the 4EU+ Summer School in International Business Law with partner institutions across Europe and regularly organizes academic events including the SHIELD Lecture Series on 'Transformations of Global Economic Governance' and conferences addressing contemporary challenges in international economic dispute resolution.