Dr I-Ju Chen

Dr I-Ju Chen is a scholar of international economic and commercial law and joined Exeter Law School in 2024. She serves as LLM Programme Director for International Commercial Law. Her research focuses on international and EU economic law, WTO law, fisheries governance, sustainable development, and Asia-Pacific legal issues.

Dr Chen completed her PhD in Law at the University of Birmingham, where her research on the WTO Fisheries Subsidies Agreement was sponsored by the University and received the Best Paper Award at the Taiwan Science Symposium (2018). At the invitation of the editors, she has authored two rapporteur headnotes on regional fisheries management organisations for the Oxford International Organisations (OXIO) database. Her work has been published in leading journals including Trade, Law and Development, Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, and the Asian Journal of WTO and International Health Law and Policy (SSCI-indexed). Her scholarship has been cited by researchers working in the fields of Asia-Pacific studies and sustainable development. She has presented her research at conferences organised by the Society of International Economic Law, Law and Society Association, University of Washington, National University of Singapore, National Taiwan University, and Seoul National University School of Law.

Dr Chen has undertaken advanced legal training at the Hague Academy of International Law and the Pearl River Delta Academy of International Investment Law. She has held a number of visiting appointments, including Visiting Scholar at Doshisha University Faculty of Law (2024), Jean Monnet Visiting Scholar at Singapore Management University Yong Pung How School of Law (2023), and Visiting Scholar at Durham Law School (2021). An active contributor to the international legal academic community, she is an Editor of the Chinese (Taiwan) Yearbook of International Law and Affairs (Brill). She has served as an expert reviewer for international law and policy reports produced by East Asian think tanks, including the Korea Legislation Research Institute, and has undertaken peer review for journals and publishers including the Chinese Journal of Comparative Law (Oxford University Press), Journal of Environmental Law and Policy, Wolverhampton Law Journal, Routledge, and Managerial Finance.

Prior to entering academia, she practised banking and insurance law, professional ethics, and corporate governance at BNP Paribas Taiwan for three years. She also worked in private practice in Taiwan, handling civil, commercial, and criminal litigation matters. As a legal research fellow at a leading Taiwanese science and technology law and industry policy think tank, she provided legal opinions on legislative and regulatory reforms, contributed to government-commissioned research projects, published professional reports, designed continuing professional development programmes for small and medium-sized enterprises, and served as Executive Editor of the Science and Technology Law Review.