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Dr Theodora A Christou, Called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn (Barrister)

Theodora A

Convenor of Transnational Law and Governance

Email: t.a.christou@qmul.ac.uk
Room Number: Lincoln's Inn Fields
Website: https://ssrn.com/author=1597167

Profile

Theodora Christou is Convenor of Transnational Law and Governance at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London, and Co-Founder and Director of CASTL (the Centre for Applied Sustainable Transition Law). She is also a Visiting Lecturer and Convenor of International Protection of Human Rights (LL342) at the London School of Economics, and a member of the Advisory Board of the International Centre for Digital Trade and Innovation (iC4DTI). She also sits on a number of Committees of the International Chamber of Commerce, including the Sustainability Committee.

She developed the Transnational Law and Governance modules with the support of guest lecturers from practice and industry, ensuring the modules speak to every legal specialism. In the 30-credit Semester One module (SOLM028), students examine how the state has lost its monopoly on law-making, and engage with the theory and realities underpinning a plurality of law-making sources, including private actors, alongside the formation, enforcement and domestic impact of transnational law. In the 15-credit Semester Two module (SOLM027), students are given a practical grounding in how law is really made, with a focus on how law enables sustainable transformations that fulfil the Sustainable Development Goals. She also convenes Fundamentals of Law and Professional Ethics (IPLC134) for the IP programme.

Theodora is a barrister (called to the Bar at the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn, 2001) and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). She has taught Criminal Law at Queen Mary (2009–12, 2014/15), was course convenor of the LLM module on International Protection of Human Rights at the University of Surrey (2015), and was course convenor of the Forced Migration and Human Rights unit on the MSc Refugee Studies at London South Bank University (2007–2010). She also taught for many years an Introduction to Law for Engineering and Science for Queen Mary's SEMS Department.

She consults on human rights, transnational law and governance, sustainability and the law, corporate social responsibility/ESG, EU law, the rule of law, international law, transitional justice, the intersection of human rights and commercial law, legal reform, and law's response to globalisation. As a consultant, she has been involved in cases before national, regional and international bodies and courts, and has designed and delivered training and legal reform, capacity-building, litigation, policy development and transitional justice programmes across more than 80 jurisdictions and in person in over 20 countries.

She is an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Bar Human Rights Committee (since 2008), where her work has covered violence against women, fair trials, trial observations, the prohibition of torture, election monitoring, the right to life, arbitrary detention, assassination attempts and freedom of expression. As a consultant to The AIRE Centre, she advised on over 200 cases spanning EU law and human rights, including landmark matters such as A and others [2005] UKHL 71, Al-Skeini and others [2007] UKHL 26, R (Baiai and others) [2008] UKHL 53, Behrami v France; Saramati v France, Germany and Norway (ECtHR GC), and Chagos Islanders v UK (ECtHR).

She is a member of the International Bar Association's Working Group on AI and Human Rights. She has also worked in-house at an IT company on rule of law, climate change and data protection projects, co-running the Open Computing Alliance with the company's former General Counsel. She was previously a Research Fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL), working on counter-terrorism law, human rights, telecommunications regulation, the Commonwealth Legal Advisory Service, data protection, and the Legal Tools for Commonwealth Africa project, which involved a network of over 200 lawyers. She was awarded the Peter Duffy Human Rights Award by Lincoln's Inn and spent three months at the European Court of Human Rights under the supervision of Sir Nicolas Bratza.

Theodora has given expert evidence to, among others: the Home Office and Ministry of Justice Review of the Balance of EU Competence in Criminal Matters; the UK Parliamentary Inquiry on Female Genital Mutilation (which contributed to the introduction of FGM Protection Orders); the UK Parliamentary Inquiry on Violence Against Women; the Africa Justice Foundation on the Rule of Law within the Post-2015 SDG Agenda; the European Commission's Green Paper consultation on EU criminal justice legislation in detention; and the Commission's public consultation on priorities for a new European information society strategy (2010–2015).

Her research interests reflect her practical experience at the ICC, CASTL, iC4DTI and elsewhere, and a longstanding ability to immerse herself in new legal terrain and conduct rigorous, detailed research across legal specialisms.

Postgraduate Teaching

She also supervises LLM dissertations in transnational law and governance and related fields.

Research

Theodora's current research centres on Transnational Law and Governance — how law responds to the pressures of globalisation, including innovations in technology, shifts in economic power, and new ways of conducting business. She is particularly interested in non-state law-making by private actors and institutions, including law in the digitalised economy and the impact of technology on legal innovation. Through CASTL and the ICC, her work extends to sustainable transition law, and through her role on the iC4DTI Advisory Board, to the legal architecture of digital trade, including UNCITRAL model laws.

She continues to bring her expertise in transnational law and international human rights law to numerous consultancy and advisory projects, and is currently completing a textbook on Transnational Law and Governance.

Publications

Public Engagement

  • Theodora authored Demystifying Legal Reform for Digitalised Trade: Why a holistic approach beats piecemeal reform* (iC4DTI, in partnership with CASTL, 2026) — iC4DTI's inaugural published report.
  • Governments 'must look beyond MLETR' in digital trade drive — Global Trade Review, 7 July 2026.
  • Moderator, AI and Human Rights — Queen Mary Global Policy Institute, co-organised with the Society for Computers and Law (SCL), in collaboration with CCLS, DERI, the IBA and The Alan Turing Institute
  • Co-author, Digital Contact Tracing for the Covid-19 Epidemic: A Business and Human Rights Perspective* (IBA, 2020), and presenter at the related IBA webinar Contact Tracing Apps and Human Rights] (25 June 2020)
  • Speaker, International Finance webinar, International Law Association 150th Anniversary programme, Monday 6 November 2023 — alongside Rhoda Weeks-Brown (General Counsel, IMF), Prof Douglas Arner (HKU), Prof Deborah Burand (NYU), Whitney Debevoise (Arnold & Porter), Vivienne Yeda Apopo (East African Development Bank) and others; see the ILA France webinar page.
  • Co-author, Re-imagining the Future of Trade - thought-leadership report, launched at ICC UK's conference of the same name, Clifford Chance (5 December 2024). Theodora also spoke on the panel "Are we being ambitious enough?" alongside Professor David Hughes (Teesside), Professor Jun Du (Aston), Alexander Goulandris (ICE Digital Trade) and Shona Tatchell (EBRD).
  • ICC UK, Eversheds Sutherland (24 September 2024) — panellist, Exploring Sustainability and Competition.
  • Thai–UK Digital Trade workshops, British Embassy Bangkok (moderator, 2022–2023) — see the ICC UK project report.
  • Dr Theodora Christou shares views on Brexit Vote in an interview for French outlet Le Monde — 16 January 2019.
  • QMUL Law academics sign letter claiming Investigatory Powers Bill not up to the task — 15 March 2016.

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