Nengye Liu

Associate Professor Nengye Liu teaches international law and the law of the sea at Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He was educated in the School of Law, Wuhan University (China, LLB and LLM) and the Faculty of Law and Criminology, Ghent University (Belgium, Doctor of Laws, 2012). Prior to joining Macquarie, Dr Liu taught at the Universities of Adelaide and New England. He was previously a European Union Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Dundee (Scotland) and a Future Ocean Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Kiel (Germany). He has held visiting research positions at the Universities of Cambridge, Tsinghua, Montreal, Hamburg, Lapland, Tromsø, Tasmania, Trier and Shanghai Jiao Tong. He was also a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Lapland (Finland, September 2017) and the School of Law, Xiamen University (China, September 2018, as Chen An Chair Professor of International Law).

Associate Professor Nengye Liu’s research covers the law of the sea, international environmental law, international polar law, Chinese law and the EU External Relations law. His current research centres on the rise of China and its implications for global ocean governance, with particular focus on the Polar Regions. Dr Liu examines the relationships between power, order and international law, with the aim to develop sustainable ocean governance in a changing world. He has published two edited books (Brill, Edward Elgar), more than 40 refereed articles in leading journals, such as Marine Policy, International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law, Ocean Development and International Law, Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce, Review of European, Comparative and International Environmental Law, Heidelberg Journal of International Law as well as book chapters with highly regarded international publishers, such as Routledge, Brill Nijhoff, Hart, Springer, Edward Elgar and Kluwer Law International.

Associate Professor Liu has presented research results in more than 30 countries across five continents. He regularly engages with the public through opinion pieces in publications such as The Conversation, The Diplomat, China Dialogue, and The Interpreter. His research has been covered by mainstream media around the world, e.g., BBC, ABC, The Australian, The Atlantic and The Strait Times. He is a Chief Investigator of Australian Research Council Discovery Grant “Geopolitical Changes and the Antarctic Treaty System” (2019-2021). Other major funding bodies, including the EU Marie Curie Fellowship, German Research Foundation (DFG), German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Research Council of Norway and Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), have also supported his research. He serves as an Associate Editor of the Yearbook of International Environmental Law (Oxford University Press), a Review Editor of the Frontiers in Marine Science and an editor of ANZSIL Perspective.

Research projects / interests:

• Law of the Sea
• International Environmental Law
• The European Union and Antarctic governance
• Rise of China
• The Antarctic Treaty System

Keywords: Law of the Sea, Polar Governance, China, European Union