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Dr Tibisay Morgandi

Tibisay

Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in International Energy and Natural Resources Law

Email: t.morgandi@qmul.ac.uk
Room Number: Lincoln’s Inn Fields

Profile

Dr Tibisay Morgandi, LLM (Harvard), PhD (Graduate Institute Geneva), Postdoc (Cambridge) is a tenured Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in International Energy and Natural Resources Law at QMUL School of Law. She is an accomplished international lawyer with a decade of experience teaching, publishing and practising in public and private international law, focusing on energy, environmental and climate law, investment and trade law, business and human rights (including ESG and sustainability) and the law of the sea.

At QMUL, Tibisay is the Director of the TradeLab legal clinic offering pro bono support on international trade and investment law and policy to governments, NGOs, local communities and SMEs (see projects on ‘Investment Treaties and Climate Change Measures’ and ‘Counterclaims in International Investment Law’ for the Chilean Government). At QMUL, Tibisay also chaired the Climate Emergency Working Group, leading the creation of the podcast series ‘Climate Game Changers’ (listen to episodes on ‘Climate Litigation’ and ‘AI and climate’). In recognition of her work in the field of climate law, environmental law, and business and human rights, Tibisay has been appointed Distinguished Research Fellow at Macquarie University’s Centre for Environmental Law based in Sydney.

Tibisay has been involved in proceedings before the International Court of Justice, ICSID, and SIAC. She has advised governments in Europe and South America, as well as inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations, including the European Commission, Chatham House and Client Earth. She is listed as arbitrator by the Energy Disputes Arbitration Center (EDAC) and is EDAC’s UK representative. Prior to joining QMUL, she practised public international law and investment arbitration at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in Paris.

Tibisay was educated in Italy (Law degree, Università Cattolica Milan), in Switzerland (Masters and PhD in International Law, Graduate Institute Geneva), and in the US (LLM, Harvard). Prior to joining QMUL, she was awarded a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge, where she taught international environmental law and international law. At Cambridge, she created the first-ever dataset on international energy agreements (energybilaterals.org, funded by Cambridge, Philomathia Foundation and SNSF).

Tibisay is registered at the Bar in Italy, where she practised for two years in domestic litigation and arbitration. She is an Italian national, who grew up bilingual in Italian and Spanish; she is also fluent in English and French.

Postgraduate Teaching

LLM Teaching

Dr Morgandi convenes and teaches four modules:

Special acknowledgements

In 2020, Dr Morgandi received special recognition for the quality of her teaching from the Vice Principal for Education and the HSS Dean for Education.

Research

Research Interests:

Research interests / current research projects

Dr Morgandi’s research focuses on public and private international law issues in the fields of energy and environmental law, business and human rights (including tort law and ESG), and international dispute settlement.

Her specialism is bilateral energy agreements. Her book, entitled State Energy Agreements (CUP, forthcoming 2023) analyses an original dataset of over 600 bilateral state agreements regulating the allocation, exploitation and distribution of fossil fuels, nuclear energy and renewables. The book uses this dataset to generate a taxonomy of these legal instruments with a view to mapping this hitherto largely unstudied field, situating these agreements within the broader corpus of international law.

Her research also focuses on the interplay between environmental and private law, including tort law and company law. She recently published an article (Cambridge International Law Journal 2022) examining the forum non conveniens doctrine in English parent company liability cases, focusing on the recent Vedanta, Unilever and Okpabi trilogy. The article explores the dilemma that English courts have faced when confronted with claims against English parent companies for environmental harms caused by the operations of their subsidiaries in developing countries. She also recently completed an article (under review with the Cambridge Law Journal) exploring the extent to which Vedanta and Okpabi recast the law on tortious liability of English parent companies for environmental harms caused by their subsidiaries’ operations both UK and internationally. The article also discusses how parent companies may now be liable for promises made in their environmental, social and governance (ESG) reports under the Companies Act 2006 or voluntarily.

Dr Morgandi’s broader research focuses on the different ways in which public law is influenced by private economic interests, both from a doctrinal and an ethical perspective. In an article entitled ‘Arbitration and Offshore Resources in Disputed Maritime Areas’ (OUP 2020), she looked at the way that international law on maritime boundary delimitation is driven by the economic interests of private foreign investors (oil companies), despite this factor appearing at most only indirectly in case law and doctrinal analyses. Dr Morgandi is currently following this up in an empirical and doctrinal research project which maps territorial and maritime conflicts around the world in light of the presence of disputed resources in these areas.

Dr Morgandi also works on ways in which both public law and private law enable, enhance and in some ways hinder the transition to a sustainable and carbon-free economy. She has co-authored two articles on different aspects of the (synergetic but also conflictual) relationship between energy security and the energy transition (OUP 2021; Edward Elgar 2021).

Funded research

During her SNSF Postdoctoral Fellowship at Cambridge (C-EENRG, Department of Land Economy), Dr Morgandi published a dataset of bilateral energy agreements as part of a research project funded by the SNSF, the Philomathia Foundation and the University of Cambridge.

Other research projects and consultancies

Dr Morgandi has consulted for several governmental and non-governmental organisations.

In 2022, she authored two reports on forced labour rights in international trade, one on ‘Recognising the ILO Fundamental Labour Right at the WTO: a Call for an Authoritative Interpretation’ and the other one on ‘WTO Law Aspects of Import Prohibitions on Products and Services Made Using Forced Labour’. The reports were published by the International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network (ILAW).

In 2020, she authored a report on process and production methods (PPMs) in international trade. The report was published by Client Earth as ‘International Trade Rules and Environmental Protection Measures – Import Restrictions and Process Production Methods (PPMs) under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade’.

In 2018 and 2019, Dr Morgandi consulted for the European Commission, working on projects related to trade and human rights, and energy connectivity (in particular the EU model of electricity transmission networks, ENTSO-E) respectively.

In 2018, she contributed to a report on ‘Human Rights Impact Assessments of Trade Agreements’ for Chatham House.

In 2017, Dr Morgandi co-authored a research paper on fisheries subsidies in the WTO, which was commissioned and published by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) to assist negotiators at the 2017 WTO Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires.

Publications

Book

In production

  • T Morgandi, State Energy Agreements (Cambridge: CUP, forthcoming 2024)

Articles/Book Chapters

Under contract

  • L Castellanos-Jankiewicz, T Morgandi and S Puig (eds), Symposium on ‘New Public and Private Pathways Towards Supply Chain Accountability’ (2024) AJIL Unbound

     

  • L Bartels and T Morgandi, ‘Human Rights and International Investment Law’, A Mitchell (ed) A Research Agenda for International Investment Law (Edward Elgar: forthcoming 2024)

Under review

  • T Morgandi, ‘The Vedanta and Okpabi Revolution: Tortious Responsibility of UK Parent Companies for Environmental Harms Caused by their Foreign Subsidiaries’, The Cambridge Law Journal

Published

Research Papers

Published

Blog Post

Published

Supervision

Dr Morgandi is currently co-supervising, alongside Dr Angelos Dimopoulos and Professor Malgosia Fitzmaurice, a PhD thesis entitled ‘Member States as advocates of the EU? Legal challenges and implications concerning the balancing of environmental concerns under bilateral investment agreements with non-EU countries’ (Eleftheria Asimakopoulou).

Public Engagement

  • Morgandi (chair), ‘Potential Investment Treaty Claims Arising Out of Measures Implementing Chile’s International Climate Change Commitments’, Workshop organised by the Investment, Services and Digital Economy Division of the Undersecretariat for International Economic Relations of the Government of Chile to present Queen Mary/TradeLab report prepared under her supervision, Santiago, Chile (27 October 2022)
  • Morgandi (panellist), ‘The Role of Ethics in Galvanizing Climate Action’, Panel on ‘Beyond Rocket Science: Assessing the Role of Natural & Social Sciences in Galvanizing Climate Action’, International Law Weekend – American Branch International Law Association, Fordham School of Law, New York (21 October 2022)
  • Morgandi, Interview on Israel-Lebanon Maritime Delimitation Agreement, Energy Intelligence (published as Total in Key Role in Israel-Lebanon Deal authored by Tom Pepper) (20 October 2022)
  • Morgandi (discussant), The Rights of Peoples over Natural Resources, Private Seminar organised by the King’s College London Transnational Law Institute and Clean Trade, King’s College London (21 June 2022)
  • Morgandi, ‘Energy Transition and International Law’, International Law Association 80th Biennial Conference, Lisbon (20 June 2022)
  • Morgandi, ‘Legal Implications of the Military Occupation of the Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plants’, International Law Student Club Lecture Series, The Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University (virtual event) (31 May 2022)
  • Morgandi, Interview on the Military Occupation of the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant, Voice of America (in Ukrainian and in Russian) (26 April 2022)
  • Morgandi, ‘Environment Related Issues in International Arbitration’, Conference on Turning Aspirations into Reality – Go Green, Be Ethical and Protect Your Company, Queen Mary University of London & Clyde&Co, London (23 March 2022)
  • Morgandi, ‘Energy Security in International Law’, Lecture Series on Energy Transition and Climate Governance, Environment, Energy and Natural Resources (EENR) Center, University of Houston Law Center (virtual event) (15 December 2021)
  • Morgandi (moderator), ‘Arbitration, Energy and Climate Change’, VI Oxford Arbitration Day, University of Oxford (virtual event) (12 November 2021)
  • Morgandi and Miron, ‘Can an Energy Transition be Energy Secure? Theory and Practice’, King’s College London Knowledge Exchange Workshop on Governing the Energy Transition: Local Action, International Ambition, King’s College London (virtual event) (19 March 2021)
  • Morgandi, ‘Sovereignty, Extraterritoriality and Human Rights Impacts of International Oil Companies Abroad’, Energy Law & Ethics Workshop, Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London (virtual event) (2 June 2020)
  • Morgandi, ‘Arbitration and Offshore Resources in Disputed Maritime Areas’, Seminar Series International Economic Law & Policy (IELAP), King’s College London (17 January 2020)
  • Morgandi, ‘The EU Legal and Regulatory Energy Framework’, Session on Energy Connectivity (Special Session with the EU), 6th Conference, Ulaanbaatar Dialogue on Northeast Asian Security, Ulaanbaatar (6 June 2019)
  • Morgandi, Poster: ‘State Energy Treaties’, 7th Biennial Conference of the Society of International Economic Law (SIEL), Washington DC (13 July 2018).
  • Morgandi, ‘Human Rights Impacts of Trade Agreements’, Workshop, Chatham House, London (21 March 2018)
  • Morgandi and Bartels, ‘Options for the Legal Form of Fisheries Subsidies Disciplines’, Advancing SDG 14.6 Through Fisheries Subsidies Disciplines: Institutional Issues for WTO Member delegates, World Trade Organization (16 November 2017)
  • Morgandi, ‘The Rise and Decline of the Principle of Res Judicata in International Case Law: Where Do We Stand?’, Coordinating Principles and Concepts Between International Courts and Tribunals, Seminar at PluriCourts (Centre for the Study of the Legitimate Roles of the Judiciary in the Global Order), Faculty of Law, University of Oslo (1 December 2016)

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