Ilaria Espa

Ilaria Espa is Associate Professor of International Economic Law at the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), 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 the Natural Resources Programme of the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL) and Member of its Board of Governors.

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 being awarded a Marie Curie fellowship from the European Commission for her post-doctoral studies (2013–2015). Ilaria holds a Ph.D. in International Law and Economics from the Department of Legal Studies of Bocconi University (2013) and held visiting positions in Italy (University of Milan, 2022; University of Sassari, 2016), Germany (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, 2022) and the US (Columbia Law School, 2012). Since 2022, the European Commission added Ilaria to the “List of Candidates for Appointment as Arbitrators and Trade and Sustainable Development Experts”.

Ilaria’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 volumes International Trade in Sustainable Electricity: Regulatory Challenges in International Economic Law (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and Natural Resources, Sustainable Development and International Law (Kluwer Law International 2026). Her work has also been published in leading international peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of International Economic Law, World Trade Review, Journal of World Trade, Journal of World Investment and Trade, and European Yearbook of International Economic Law. In 2013, she received the SIDI (Italian Society of International Law) prize, awarded to a younger author for meritorious scholarship published in Revue Internationale de Droit Économique. In 2020, she was conferred the International Legal Specialist in Natural Resources Award by the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL). She is principal investigator of the NRP84 i-BREG project, co-principal investigator of the EWG project Reg4Fuels and work package leader the SWEET reFuel.ch consortium. 

Ilaria is the co-rapporteur of the Committee of the International Law Association (ILA) on the ‘the Contributions of International Law to the Global Sustainable Development Goals and the Post-2030’. She is furthermore the co-convenor of the ‘Energy and International Law’ Interest Group of the European Society of International Law (ESIL) ; co-chair of the Sustainable Development Law and Governance Association (SDGLA) – Switzerland; co-convenor of the 'International Economic Law' Interest Group of the Italian Society of International Law (SIDI) ; elected Secretary-General of the Swiss Energy Law Association (SELA) and member of the Scientific Committee of the European Association of Energy Law Associations (EFELA); and, Fellow of the Cambridge University Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance (C-EENRG) Platform on Global Energy Governance. She has acted as consultant to a number of governmental agencies, NGOs, international organizations, and business associations including the World Trade Organization, the European Commission, the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, and the Swiss Federal Office of Energy. She is a frequent presenter at academic conferences and guest lecturer, and has also given numerous talks for non-academic audiences.