Ilaria Espa is Senior Assistant Professor of International Economic Law (with tenure track) at the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), Senior Research Fellow at the World Trade Institute (WTI) and Adjunct Professor at the Law Faculty of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. She is furthermore Lead Counsel of Natural Resources Programme of the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL). Formerly Adjunct Professor at the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of Milan (2015-2020), Ilaria was a member of the WTI-based NCCR Trade Regulation Programme until its expiration in 2017 in addition to acting as Scientific Coordinator of the WTI Doctoral Programme (2015-2017) and to being awarded a Marie Curie fellowship from the European Commission for her post-doctoral studies (2013-2015). Ilaria holds a PhD in International Law and Economics from the Department of Legal Studies of Bocconi University (2013) and was a visiting scholar at Columbia Law School (2012). In November 2020, she obtained the National Scientific Qualification to Associate Professor in International Law (sector 12/E1) by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (by unanimity).
laria’s areas of expertise include international economic law, with a focus on trade regulation, international environmental law, and EU law. She has published extensively on issues at the intersection of trade and sustainability, mainly in the areas of climate change, energy and commodities, as well as on the law governing the sustainable management of natural resources, always from a multi-layered governance perspective. In particular, she is the author of a monograph on Export Restrictions on Critical Minerals and Metals: Testing the Adequacy of WTO Disciplines (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and the co-editor of the volume on International Trade in Sustainable Electricity: Regulatory Challenges in International Economic Law (Cambridge University Press, 2017).