Prof. Jane Kelsey

Professor Jane Kelsey has law degrees from Victoria University of Wellington, the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge and the University of Auckland and is currently Professor Emeritus in Law at the University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Professor Kelsey specialises in international economic regulation through a political economy lens, with particular reference to the impacts of services, investment, regulatory, and digital trade disciplines on policy space, especially in the Global South and for Indigenous Peoples. She has closely monitored multilateral, regional and bilateral negotiations on trade and investment since the ministerial conference of GATT Uruguay Round in Brussels in 1990 and the formation of the WTO in 1995. More recently she has analysed the evolving crisis of neoliberal globalisation, both at the WTO and in mega-regional and bilateral negotiations, such as the TPP, TISA, RCEP and IPEF. Professor Kelsey has attended many WTO ministerial conferences in various capacities since 1996 and regularly presents at the WTO Public Forum, and actively participated in the UNCITRAL Working Group III review of investor-state dispute settlement prior to Covid-19. In addition to many academic publications in leading international journals, commissioned technical reports, and international keynote addresses, she has advised a number of developing country governments at the WTO, in several regional groupings, and at UNCITRAL. She also works closely with Indigenous Peoples, trade unions and civil society organisations to protect their rights and interests in the international trade and investment arena. In 2023, Professor Kelsey was invited by the UAE Minister of State for Foreign Trade Dr Thani Bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi to be a member of his Ideation and Advisory Board for the 13thWTO Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi.