Prof. Manfred Elsig

Manfred Elsig is Professor of International Relations and Managing Director of the World Trade Institute of the University of Bern. From 2013-2017 he acted as the Director of the SNF NCCR Trade Regulation. He studied at the universities of Bern and Bordeaux and earned a degree in political science. He worked from 1997 to 1999 at the Swiss Federal Office for Foreign Economic Affairs. He later joined the Political Science Institute at the University of Zurich and received his PhD (Dr Phil) in 2002 with a dissertation on European Union trade policy. From 2002 to 2004 he worked for UBS financial services group and as a personal advisor to the Minister of Economy of Canton Zürich. In 2004-2005 he was a teaching fellow at the International Relations Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science. From 2005 to 2009 he worked as a post-doc fellow at the World Trade Institute and at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. From 2009 to 2013 he was an Assistant Professor at the World Trade Institute.

His research focuses primarily on the political economy of trade, trade agreements, European trade policy, international organisations, US–EU relations, and investment treaties. He is the co-initiator of two leading databases on international economic agreements (the design of trade agreements database and the electronic database of investment treaties). He has been co-editor of World Trade Review, a journal published by Cambridge University Press, since 2020.  He has widely published in international peer-reviewed journals and has been involved in various book projects on trade policy. He has been teaching at the University of Zurich, the University of Geneva, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the Thunderbird School of Global Management. His courses include international political economy (IPE), international relations theories, international institutions, globalisation and European integration, and research methods.

For all administrative inquiries please contact Sophia Thompson (for best results, include her in cc), for media inquiries Sam Suarez