Associate Professor Jonathan Bonnitcha

My Expertise

Investment treaties; investment arbitration; investor-state dispute settlement

Fields of Research (FoR)

Biography

Jonathan is an Associate Professor in Law. His primary area of research interest is international economic governance, with a particular interest in investment treaties. Much of his research is inter-disciplinary, drawing on perspectives from the disciplines of economics and political science.

Prior to joining UNSW Law Jonathan lived in Myanmar, where he worked as an advisor to the Myanmar Government on investment governance. For several...view more

Prior to joining UNSW Law Jonathan 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.

Jonathan holds the degrees of DPhil, MPhil and BCL from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes scholar, and the degrees of LLB and BEc (Soc Sci) from the University of Sydney, where he graduated with the University Medal in Political Economy and the Convocation Medal.

Jonathan worked part-time from 2019 to 2021.

My Grants

2022-2025 ‘China’s Belt and Road Initiative: A New Model of Economic Governance?’ (with Heng Wang, Kun Fan and Ross Buckley) Australian Research Council Discovery Project ($283,250)

2012-2013 Economic and Social Research Council (UK) Post-doctoral Fellowship (£80,000)

My Qualifications

DPhil, University of Oxford

MPhil (Dist), University of Oxford

BCL (Dist), University of Oxford

LLB (Hons I), University of Sydney

BEc (Hons I and Medal), University of Sydney

My Research Supervision

Supervision keywords

foreign direct investment

international economic law

Areas of supervision

Jonathan is available to supervise students interested in pursuing research projects on international economic governance.

Currently supervising

Elisabeth Perham, ‘Modes of external constitutional advice giving in constitutionmaking processes'

Bruno Pegorari, 'Assessing the role and the impact on Indigenous peoples of the international law of remedies'

Millicent McCreath, 'Safeguarding the interests of the international community in the protection of the marine environment under national jurisdiction'

Xiaolei Han, 'State Capitalism and the Evolution of State-owned Enterprises in China's Outward Investment Landscape: Implications for Developing China's Investor-state Dispute Settlement Mechanism'

Mohammed Abdur Razzak, 'International Law And The Changing Dynamics Of The Human Rights Due Diligence In The Global Apparel Supply Chain: Implications For Bangladesh'

Completions

Lukas Schaugg, 'A Soft Competition Among Arbitral Institutions The institutional oligopoly of mixed arbitration' (External supervisor of PhD at York University, Canada, conferred 2024)

Zhenyu Xiao, 'The Evolution of the Settlement of Investor-State Disputes in China' (PhD conferred in 2023)

Justin Jos Poonjatt, 'Using Legal Waivers in Operational-Level Grievance Mechanisms and their impact on Access to Remedies in Business and Human Rights' (PhD conferred 2023)

Dan Xie, 'Transnational Due Process and Article V(1)(b) of the New York Convention: Grounding Interpretation and Application of the Due Process Defence in the Public International Law Framework for Treaty Interpretation' (PhD conferred 2022)

Sophie Burbidge, 'Regulating Stored Value Facilities in Australia: Review and a Proposal for Reform' (PhD conferred 2019)