People

Centre Director

Associate Director

Michael (Mikis) Tsimplis is Professor of Law at City University of Hong Kong. Prior to this, he has been a Professor in Maritime Law and Oceanography at the University of Southampton, UK. Where he has been working since 1995.   Mikis’s research interests are in maritime and environmental law and the policies underpinning them. Mikis has also worked extensively in interdisciplinary research project looking at maritime autonomy and the use of technology for optimizing sea transport.  Mikis has also research interest in oceanography and sea level science. He has published extensively in both fields. His google scholar profile can be found at https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=_HLOAGAAAAAJ&hl=en.

Fellows

Professor Julien Chaisse is an award-winning Professor at the City University of Hong Kong, School of Law. Professor Chaisse is a world-renowned expert on international economic law (trade, investment, and tax), cyberlaw, and international dispute resolution. His work has garnered wide academic recognition and has been cited by international courts/tribunals as well as U.S. Courts.  Professor Chaisse currently sits on the editorial boards of several high impact academic journals, and is Editor-in-Chief of the Asia Pacific Law Review. He is the recent recipient of the 10th Smith-Lowenfeld Prize from the International Arbitration Club of New York.

Professor Chaisse is also an accomplished senior arbitrator—several of his adjudications have been reported in the international press. He is frequently called upon as an expert witness in international trade/investment litigation and arbitration, advise international organizations, governments, law firms, and private investors on private/public international law issues (e.g. concessions contracts, special economic zones, investment structuring, state and international organization immunities, and WTO accession), and has assisted over twenty jurisdictions in drafting legislation.

Professor Chaisse is currently President and Chair of the Asia Pacific FDI Network (APFN), which is the most important organization in the region that focuses on researching foreign direct investment and facilitating cooperation among over 100 scholars and 50 institutions. He has extensive experience working as a corporate board member and serving on the board of directors/advisory board for a number of international organizations, including the World Free Zone Convention (WFZC), the Academy of International Dispute Resolution & Professional Negotiation (AIDRN), the National Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), and the Asian Academy of International Law (AAIL). Professor Chaisse is also an active member of the World Economic Forum (“Tax and Globalization Working Group” and “Data Policy Platform”), a member of the Hong Kong’s Government Board of Review (Inland Revenue Ordinance), an advisor and partner to the United Nations ARTNET on FDI, and a member of the Academic Forum on Investor-state Dispute Settlement. He is also Director of the Dot Trademark Policy Committee (DTPC), a co-founder of the Internet Intellectual Property Institute (IIPI), and is a member of the ICANN’s Working Group, which produced the Report of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs, among other highly-regarded white papers.

Prior to joining CityU Law School, Professor Chaisse taught at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Law (2009-2019) where he served as Director of the Faculty’s Research Centre as well as Director of PhD & MPhil Program. Before joining the academy, Professor Chaisse worked as deputy head of the working group on the rules and regulations for multilateral trade and investment agreements at the World Trade Institute in Bern, Switzerland (2006-2009), as a lecturer at Elite School Sciences Po Aix in France (2004-2006), and as a diplomat for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France at the French Embassy in New Delhi, India (2001-2004).

Virginia HARPER HO is a Professor of Law at CityU School of Law. Prior to joining CityU in 2021, she was the Earl B. Shurtz Research Professor, Associate Dean for International and Comparative Law Programs, and founding Director of the Polsinelli Transactional Law Center at the University of Kansas School of Law (USA). Her primary research interests focus on the intersections of corporate law and governance, securities regulation, sustainability and finance from a comparative perspective. Her work has been published by leading law journals, including the American Journal of Comparative Law, the Journal of Corporation Law, and the American Business Law Journal. She has written recently on ESG disclosure, shareholder activism, comparative corporate governance, and China's green finance reforms..

She has received numerous research and teaching awards, including the Hoeber Award for Excellence in Research from the Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB), as well as the Woodyard International Educator Award and the Docking Young Faculty Scholar Award from the University of Kansas. She is an Associate Editor and Editorial Board member of the American Journal of Comparative Law, a member of the Executive Committee of the American Society of Comparative Law (ASCL), and a Fellow of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations’ Public Intellectuals Program. She has also served as a Research Fellow of the International Institute of Green Finance (IIGF) at the Central University of Finance and Economics (CUFE) in Beijing and as a visiting scholar at Zhejiang University and Sun Yat-Sen University. Prior to entering academia, Harper Ho practiced corporate and securities law and advised U.S. and foreign multinationals on cross-border transactions with a focus on Asia.

Tianxiang He (China P. R. 1984) is Assistant Professor at the School of Law, City University of Hong Kong. Professor He holds an LL.B. degree (Huaqiao University, China, 2007) and a Master degree in International Law (Jinan University, China, 2009). Professor He received his degree of Ph.D. in IP law at Maastricht University (the Netherlands, 2016), where he was Researcher at the Department of International and European Law, and Ph.D. Fellow at Institute for Globalization and International Regulation (IGIR), and another Ph.D. degree in Criminal Law at Renmin University of China (2017).

From August 2012 to July 2013, Professor He worked in the Research Center of for the Legal Systems of Intellectual Property of Waseda University as a visiting researcher. In Europe, the Ius Commune Research School conferred to him an Honorable Mention in the Ius Commune Prize 2014.

As of 1st August 2016, Professor He is working as Assistant Professor in School of Law, City University of Hong Kong. Professor He is also acting as an External Fellow in IGIR, Maastricht University. His research interest lies in international and comparative intellectual property law.

Professor He is the author of Copyright and Fan Productivity in China: A Cross-jurisdictional Perspective. Other representative publications include: “Control or Promote? China’s Cultural Censorship System and Its Influence on Copyright Protection,” 7 Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property no.1, 74-98 (2017); “Fansubs and Market Access of Foreign Audiovisual Products in China: The Copyright Predicament and the Use of No Action Policy,” 16 Oregon Review of International Law 307 (2014); and “What Can We Learn from Japanese Anime Industries? The Differences Between the Domestic and Oversea Copyright Protection Strategies towards Fan Activities,” 62 American Journal of Comparative Law 1009 (2014)

Associate Fellows

Professor Ding Chunyan obtained LLB and LLM at Peking University, LLM at University College London and PhD at University of Hong Kong. She became qualified PRC lawyer in 2000. Before joining the Law School in 2010, Professor Ding was a Fulbright research fellow at Harvard Law School, where she conducted research on comparative health law and tort law during 2008-09. Her primary areas of research are medical law, tort law and comparative civil law.

Professor Lin’s research interests focus on empirical and economic analysis of corporate law and capital markets regulation. She has published with leading academic journals, including International Review of Law and Economics, Columbia Business Law Review, and New York University Journal of Law & Business. Professor Lin holds a J.S.D. degree from Stanford Law School, where she was appointed as the John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics. She had also been a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School and a visiting professor at Radzyner Law School in IDC Herzliya, Israel. Prior to joining City University of Hong Kong, She taught at National Chengchi University in Taiwan and has engaged in consulting projects for Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Securities and Futures Investors Protection Center. Before her academic career, she was a practicing lawyer specializing in international business and capital market transactions.

Wai Yee WAN is Associate Dean (Research and Internationalisation) and Professor, School of Law, City University of Hong Kong. Prior to joining City University of Hong Kong in January 2020, she was at Singapore Management University (SMU), where she last held the positions of Dean of Post-graduate Research Programmes and Professor of Law.

mmediately prior to joining academia in late 2005, she was a partner at Allen & Gledhill in Singapore, where she practised in mergers and acquisitions and equity capital markets. Her main areas of research are in corporate law, mergers and acquisitions, securities regulation, financial consumer regulation and global restructuring and insolvency. Her research work centres on the optimal legal institutions and governance framework in order for securities markets to flourish. She has a particular interest in Asian securities markets and why the solutions to corporate governance issues, securities market integration and reorganisation of distressed companies in the West (the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US)) may not be ideal as a basis of global best practice or may not work as intended in Asia.