A warm welcome to CIBEL new member Dr Jonathan Bonnitcha

CIBEL is delighted to welcome Dr Jonathan Bonnitcha to join the Centre as its 11th member.

CIBEL is delighted to welcome Dr Jonathan Bonnitcha to join the Centre as its 11th member.

Dr Bonnitcha is a Senior Lecturer in UNSW’s Faculty of Law and Justice. His primary area of research interest is investment treaties. His research also considers the inter-relationships between different systems of foreign investment governance, including investor-state contracts, national investment laws, national investment dispute management agencies and international principles, such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Much of Dr Bonnitcha’s research is inter-disciplinary and he regularly collaborates with academics in economics and political science. His work has been published in leading journals. He is also the author of two monographs, including the influential The Political Economy of the Investment Treaty Regime (OUP 2017). The Australian's Research Magazine named him top researcher in the field of international law in Australia in 2021.

In addition to his academic achievements, he brings a wealth of experience working in the public sector. Prior to joining UNSW Dr Bonnitcha lived in Myanmar, where he worked as an advisor to the Myanmar Government on investment governance. For several years he also worked for the Australian Attorney General's Department as a member of the team that successfully defended a multi-billion dollar challenge to Australia's tobacco plain packaging laws brought under an investment treaty.

His research achievements and extensive experience working for government at both in Australia and abroad mean that his expertise is sought by policymakers, think tanks and international organisations. He is an elected member of the steering committee of the academic forum that is informing the United Nations process for the reform of the investor-state dispute settlement system, a Senior Associate with the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s Economic law and Policy Program, and has also worked as consultant to the United Nations Development Program and Transparency International.

As one of the project Chief Investigators of the ARC Belt and Road research project, he will lead research on investor-state contracting between Chinese firms engaged in outward foreign investment and government entities of the host states in which they invest. 

You can read more about Dr Bonnitcha's  research on the websiteGoogle Scholar and Twitter @JBonnitcha

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