Kun Fan is Associate Professor of UNSW Law and a member of UNSW’s Herbert Smith Freehills China International Business and Economic Law Centre. She is an award-winning scholar in the area of international arbitration, mediation and comparative legal studies. Before joining UNSW in September 2019, she held academic positions at the Faculty of Law, McGill University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She was also a Visiting Scholar of the Harvard Yenching Institute.

Kun is author of the book Arbitration in China: A Legal and Cultural Analysis (Hart Publishing) and has published extensively on cutting-edge issues in a variety of leading international journals. She is frequently invited to speak in conferences, and give lectures and trainings in renowned institutions including Harvard Law School, Harvard Yenching Institute, Cornell Law School, Qinghua University, School of International Arbitration at Queen Mary, Geneva LLM in International Dispute Settlement (“MIDS”), Arbitration Academy, American Society of International Law, Asian Development Bank, Institute of Transnational Arbitration, International Law Institute, International Bar Association, etc. In recognition of her academic contribution, she was named the Norton Rose Fulbright Faculty Scholar in Arbitration & Commercial Law in 2017, and received numerous awards.

Apart from academic research, Kun also has extensive experience in ADR practice, and has worked as counsel, legal expert, secretary for the arbitration tribunal, arbitrator and domain names panelist in a number of international arbitrations and domain name disputes, and has overseen over a hundred arbitrations administered by the ICC International Court of Arbitration when she worked as a Deputy Counsel. She is called to the New York Bar, an Academic Council Member of the Institute of Transnational Arbitration, an Executive Committee Member of International Task Force on Mixed Mode Dispute Resolution, an Executive Council Member of the China Academy of Arbitration Law, a Domain Names Panelist of the Hong Kong International Arbitration Center (“HKIAC”) and the Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Centre (“ADNDRC”), a Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, an Accredited Mediator of the Hong Kong Mediation Accreditation Association Limited, and an Arbitrator of a number of arbitration institutions in China.  

Dr Lu Wang joined the UNSW Law & Justice as a Lecturer in August 2018 after completing PhDs at the University of Liverpool in the UK and Xi’an Jiaotong University in China respectively. The primary area of her research is international and comparative economic law, with a particular focus on international investment law, international arbitration, State-owned enterprises (SOEs) and Chinese regulation of foreign trade and investment. Lu has published on cutting-edge issues in the field of international economic law with leading international academic publishers and has engaged in a few major research projects in China. She has also served as co-guest editor to the ICSID Review (published by the Oxford University Press) Special Focus Issue on SOE and International Investment Law.

Before joining UNSW Law & Justice, Lu worked as legal intern at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) of the World Bank Group in Washington DC and the Department of Treaty and Law of MOFCOM in Beijing. She was also a Visiting Fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge. Currently, Lu serves as Affiliated Expert of the Asia-Pacific FDI Network and works closely with international organisations and key actors involved in the field of foreign direct investment (FDI).

Professor Leon Trakman is Former Dean of Law at UNSW, 2002-2007 and currently a UNSW Professor of Law. He holds both Masters’ and Doctorate degrees earned at the Harvard Law School. His academic appointments include, among others, Distinguished, Visiting and Tenured Professor at the University of California, Wisconsin, Tulane, McGill, Dalhousie and Cape Town.

Leon is author of over 150 publications, including 11 books, on comparative and international contract, trade and investment law.  He has also specialised in comparative Chinese law.

He has been awarded various national research professorships, such as a Killam Professorship and the Bora Laskin National Fellowship in Human Rights in Canada (one awarded nationally each year in a multidisciplinary contest).  He has received numerous research grants, such as from the Canada Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) and the Australian Research Council (ARC).

Beyond academia, Leon is an international commercial arbitrator and mediator and has served as presiding arbitrator or arbitrator in more than 120 international disputes and as mediated in over 30 disputes. He has also served extensively as an inter-governmental trade adjudicator, appointed by US, Canadian and Mexican Governments under North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He has acted as constitutional advisor for the Canadian and South African Governments. He is also an international consultant on legal education.

Leon is a Barrister in New South Wales; a Barrister, Solicitor and Notary Public in Nova Scotia, Canada; and an Advocate of the Supreme Court of South Africa, Cape Provincial Division. He is also the Director of the Masters in Dispute Resolution at UNSW and on numerous professional and scholarly boards of directors and advisors.

Dr Emma Armson is an Associate Professor at UNSW Law & Justice. She researches and teaches in corporate law, with a particular interest in takeover law and policy, and dispute resolution by Takeover Panels. Emma is also a member of the Centre for Law, Markets and Regulation at UNSW Law & Justice, and the Corporations Committee of the Business Law Section of the Law Council of Australia.

Emma was an academic in the Law Faculties at the University of Sydney and the Australian National University before joining UNSW. Prior to this, Emma had a decade of professional experience in corporate law. This included working on corporate law reform as a senior Federal Government policy officer and practising law as a Senior Associate at Minter Ellison. She has also been an in-house counsel at Westpac Financial Services and a Corporations Law Editor at CCH Australia.

Associate Professor Alexandra George joined the UNSW Law & Justice in 2007, having had earlier academic appointments at Queen Mary, University of London, the University of Wales, Swansea and the University of Exeter in the UK. She has also worked at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy and at the University of Sydney, has practised as an intellectual property and media lawyer, was Associate to Justice MF Moore in the Federal Court of Australia and the Industrial Relations Court of Australia, and worked in journalism at Reuters.

Alexandra’s research focuses on international intellectual property and the philosophy of intellectual property law. Recent publications examine issues of jurisdiction and enforcement in international intellectual property law, including intellectual property implications of Brexit. Her research has also proposed an original approach to understanding intellectual property law through an analysis of its metaphysics and structure of intellectual property law, and ‘property’ concepts in the commodification of intangible objects. She is the author of Constructing Intellectual Property (Cambridge University Press, 2012), which examines the ways in which the legal system defines into existence and regulates intellectual property.

Alexandra also has an interest in Chinese intellectual property law. She convenes the Beijing elective course LAWS3345 / JURD7645 / LAWS8345 China International Business and Economic Law, which is jointly organised by UNSW and Tsinghua University.

In 2013, Alexandra received a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence at UNSW. In 2016, she was named 'Academic of the Year' at the national Lawyers Weekly Women in Law Awards and awarded a Pro Bono Award for her work for The Arts Law Centre of Australia.

‘Reform of Chinese state-owned enterprises: What China can learn from the practice of competitive neutrality in Australia’ (Deborah Healey/Leon Trakman)

'Continuous Disclosure of Chinese Cross-border Listed Companies in Australia: Delisting Issues and Enhancement Measures' (Marina Nehme/ Xiao-chuan Weng)

‘Success and failure in the race to coordinate domestic policies, regulatory frameworks and institutions to the realities of the 21st century trading system: Australia and its regional trade partners’ (Heng Wang/ Weihuan Zhou)

'Global Commons in International Investment Law: The Rights and Responsibilities of States and Investors in Renewable Energy Investments’ (Xiao-Chuan Weng/ Heng Wang/ Lucas Lixinski)

'Protection of Private Property Rights in Compulsory Land Acquisition in Modern China'(Brendan Edgeworth/Weihuan Zhou)

'Research on Anti-monopoly Regulation of Abuse of Market Dominance in Trade Secret' (Deborah Healey/ Xiao-chuan Weng)

'The Status Quo and Prospect of Dual-Class Share Structure in Mainland China: Lessons and Experiences from Practices Under the Common Law System' (Xiao-chuan Weng)

‘The Evolution of Settlement of Investor-State Disputes in China: A Coherent and Conscious Approach?’ (Heng Wang/ Jonathan Bonnitcha)

‘Due Process Defence to Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards under the New York Convention: A Global Perspective in Theory and Practice' (Lucas Lixinski/Leon Trakman/Jeanne Huang)

'Reforming Corporate Governance Laws of Chinese Nonprofit Residential Care Institutions：Theoretical and practical Considerations' (Xiao-chuan Weng/ Marina Nehme)