Current roles and focus
Anthea is a Professor at the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) at the Australian National University (ANU) and a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. Her specialist research areas include public international law, trade and investment, the effect of geopolitical change on global governance, and understanding and navigating complex systems.
Anthea’s work often involves developing macro frameworks for understanding contested, multifaceted fields – a process she calls “Dragonfly Thinking” which involves incorporating diverse perspectives and disciplinary insights. She is currently working on a variety of research projects applying insights from complexity theory and innovation studies to global governance, with a particular focus on developing and applying a new Risk, Reward and Resilience (RRR) Framework.
Anthea is currently teaching: Geoeconomics; Complexity, Catastrophe and Resilience; and Globalization in a Complex World.
Anthea’s current roles include:
• Chair, ANU’s Working Group on Geoeconomics
• Director, ANU’s Center of International Governance and Justice
• Editorial Board, Journal of International Economic Law
• Editorial Board, ICSID Review
• Contributing editor for EJIL: Talk!
• Affiliated scholar at the CUNY Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality
Collaborator and creative thinker
Adopting a highly networked approach, Anthea brings together scholars and practitioners from around the world on a variety of interdisciplinary research projects, running monthly reading groups or seminar series on various topics. Her current research themes explore ideas about complexity, creativity and change in global governance and beyond.
As a visual and conceptual thinker, Anthea employs multiple paradigms, mental models, metaphors, drawings, and images to conceptualize and communicate complex ideas and emergent phenomena. Her work traverses national borders, disciplinary silos, and the academic/practice divide – an issue she plans to address in her next book, Thinking Global.
Career biography and case experience
Prior to joining the faculty at ANU, Anthea taught at the London School of Economics, Columbia Law School and Harvard Law School. More recently she has taught as a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School and the Graduate Institute and University of Geneva. Anthea holds an interdisciplinary PhD in global governance from the ANU, an LLM in International Legal Studies from New York University, and a BA/LLB from the ANU in law, philosophy and mathematics.
Anthea has won numerous awards for her research and writing, including the American Society of International Law’s Certificate of Merit for Preeminent Contribution to Creative Scholarship for her first book, Is International Law International? with Oxford University Press, the American Journal of International Law’s Francis Deák Prize for the best article published by a younger scholar (twice), a UK Leverhulme Award, an ANU Futures Award, and the JG Crawford Award for the best ANU social science PhD. Her latest book, Six Faces of Globalization with Harvard University Press, was selected as one of the Best Books of 2021 by The Financial Times and Fortune Magazine.
Before becoming an academic, Anthea worked as an attorney for Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in New York and London, and as an Associate to Chief Justice Gleeson AC at the High Court of Australia. She has experience as counsel, expert, consultant and arbitrator in cases including investment treaty arbitrations, international commercial arbitrations and public international law claims. Anthea is admitted as an attorney, solicitor and legal practitioner in New York, London and the Australian Capital Territory respectively. For more information on her case experience, see here.
Anthea lives in her hometown of Canberra, Australia, with her husband and two daughters.
