The Centre for the Law, Governance and Regulation of the Global Economy (GLOBE) welcomes its first Visiting Research Fellow, Dr Lorenzo Cotula who will be working with the Centre in academic year 2015 -16.

Dr Cotula is a principal researcher in law and sustainable development at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), where he leads the Legal Tools Team.

Lorenzo leads research, capacity and policy work on issues at the interface between law and international development, with a focus on the law governing natural resource rights and investments in low and middle-income countries. This includes work on international investment law, human rights, land rights and legal issues related to ‘land grabbing’, as well as the political economy of natural resource investments. Lorenzo also leads IIED’s work on ‘Legal Tools for Citizen Empowerment’, an initiative to strengthen local rights and voices within natural resource investments in low and middle-income countries.

Before joining IIED in 2002, Lorenzo worked on assignments with the Legal Office of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. He holds academic qualifications in law, development studies and sustainable business from the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, the London School of Economics, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Cambridge.

Recent publications include Foreign Investment, Law and Sustainable Development: A Handbook on Agriculture and Extractive Industries; The Great African Land Grab? Agricultural Investments and the Global Food System; Human Rights, Natural Resource and Investment Law in a Globalised World: Shades of Grey in the Shadow of the Law; Investment Contracts and Sustainable Development: How to Make Contracts for Fairer and More sustainable Investments; and a wide range of research reports, journal articles and book chapters.

Lorenzo has previously collaborated with other GLOBE Centre researchers, including contributions to the Network on International Law, Natural Resources and Sustainable Development (http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/research/centres/ilnrsd/ ) , and will be working with GLOBE to organise a workshop on international investment law under the upcoming International Law in Context Workshop Series.