Dr Joshua Curtis

• Biography/ Background

  Joshua joined Adelaide Law School as a Lecturer in 2021. He previously held positions as Lecturer and Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Liverpool, Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics, Postdoctoral Fellow at Freie Universitaet Berlin, and Doctoral Fellow at the National University of Ireland Galway. He is an alumni of the University of Adelaide (1992-1997) and obtained his PhD from the National University of Ireland Galway (2014). In 2020 he gained a Postgraduate Certificate in Advanced Practice (Teaching in Higher Education) and became a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. External to academia, Joshua has engaged in a range of policy work and knowledge exchange, including human rights fieldwork in Nepal and consultancies to the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, the legal and public health departments of the Government of Oman, the International Federation for Human Rights, the South Centre, the Irish Cancer Society, and the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission. He is an academic member of the Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations (ETO) Consortium. 

• Qualifications

  2020 - Postgraduate Certificate in Advanced Practice (Teaching in Higher Education) - University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

  2014 - PhD (Law) - National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland

  2006 - LLM (Human Rights Law) - National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland

  1997 - BA (Moral, Political and Legal Philosophy) - University of Adelaide, Australia

• Teaching Interests

  Currently at the Adelaide Law School I am teaching Administrative Law and Intellectual Property at the undergraduate level.

  My teaching interests extend more broadly, however, as indicated by the following experience over the last decade.

  Undergraduate:

  Law of Tort - 2nd Year LLB, University of Liverpool

  Contemporary Issues in the Law of Business Enterprise - 3rd Year LLB, University of Liverpool (Coordinator)

  Law and Social Justice: Human Rights and Economic Policy - 2nd Year LLB, University of Liverpool

  Development and Human Rights - 3rd Year BA, National University of Ireland Galway (Coordinator)

  Postgraduate:

  Interdisciplinary and Mixed Doctoral Research Methodologies - PhD, Freie Universitaet Berlin (Coordinator)

  International Peace and Security - LLM, University of Liverpool (Coordinator)

  Economic, Social and Cultural Rights - LLM, National University of Ireland Galway

  Governance and Human Rights Challenges in Trade, Investment and Development - MSc (Public Policy), Universitaet Erfurt (Coordinator)

  I have also co-supervised two PhD candidates to completion:

  Dr Ioannis Kampourakis, Freie Universitaet Berlin - Topic: Dialectics of Transparency in the Information Age: Whistleblowing and the Right to Know (Co-Supervisor with Professor Klaus Hoffmann Holland)

  Dr Frederik Schmiddinger, Freie Universitaet Berlin - Topic: Impact of Human Rights Discourses on Rule-Making and Rule-Finding at the International Level: A Discourse Analysis of the International Law Commission's Work on State Official Immunities from Foreign Criminal Jurisdiction (Co-Supervisor with Professor Heike Kreiger)

• Research Interests

  My research has a predominantly international focus, linking the fields of international economic and human rights law, business and human rights, development economics, and global governance. I take an approach that is critical, socio-legal and inherently interdisciplinary, primarily built on a combination of law, heterodox economics and political economy aimed at constructing alternative models of economic governance, particularly in relation to foreign investment, financing for development and public health.

  Human rights, foreign investment and financing for development

  The core of my research to date has taken a critical approach to the interplay between human rights law, international investment law and its broader soft law context of financing for development. I incorporate heterodox economic theory, extraterritorial human rights obligations and aspects of international relations in a search for alternatives to mainstream economic ideology and the legal and governance structures largely determined by it. My PhD provided a macro human rights critique of the current global approach to foreign investment in law and economic policy, based on this interdisciplinary perspective. A forthcoming monograph refines the PhD and begins to situate a growing recognition of States' extraterritorial human rights obligations within current theories of global law. An offshoot of this theme is an article currently under review, which interweaves a dual critique of current (neo-liberal) competition law in the US and the EU, on one hand, and the supposed doctrinal neutrality of human rights with respect to national and international economic orders, on the other. Leading on from this line of research, my next long-term research project is on ‘The EU, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations and International Economic Governance'. This project will extend the analysis in my monograph to a broader set of economic processes and actors specific to the wider field of financing for development.

  Public health and economic governance

  In 2015 my research agenda also branched into public health when I authored a report addressing the impact of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership on public health in Ireland. This led to the publication of a co-edited collection on global health and economic governance relating specifically to obesity, offering a conceptual map toward alternative models of governance in the field and offering methods for deepening linkages between the public health and legal communities.

  An underpinning methodology merging socio-economic rights and heterodox economics

  Going deeper into theory, I am working on developing the rigor of my underlying interdisciplinary approach or methodology, conducting an online series of interviews with economists and economic sociologists looking at the interplay between economics and the law. I am presently working this material into an article that expands on modalities by which to merge socio-economic rights and heterodox economics into a theory that offers practical means for realising their emancipatory and transformative potentials.

• Research Funding

  2018 - Consultancy, UK Equality and Human Rights Commission - Report: "Enhancing the Status of UN Treaty Rights in Domestic Setting" - with Dr Aoife Daly and Prof Yvonne McDermott - £18,000

  2017 - Building Legal Capacity in the Caribbean - University of Liverpool International Netwrok Fund - with Prof Amandine Garde - £3,000

  2015 - Consultancy, Irish Cancer Society - Report: "TTIP, ISDS and the Implications for Irish Public Health Policy" - with Dr John Reynolds - €5,000

  2012 - Doctoral Fellowship, Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland Galway - €30,000

• Publications

  Books

  Joshua Curtis, Human Rights and Foreign Investment: Visions of Cooperation and Coherence in Global Law-Making (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2022)

  Amandine Garde, Joshua Curtis and Olivier De Schutter (eds.), Ending Childhood Obesity: A Challenge at the Crossroads of International; Human Rights and Economic Law (Edward Elgar, 2020)

   

  Articles

  Joshua Curtis, 'Socio-Economic Rights, Competition and Systemic Neutrality' - [under review with the Tulane Journal of International and Comparative Law]

  Joshua Curtis, 'The U.S. Economic Polity, Social Identity and International Human Rights' 32 Sociological Forum 1 (2017)

  Joshua Curtis, 'The Economics of Necessity: Human Rights and Ireland's Natural Resources' 7 Irish Yearbook of International Law (2012)

   

  Book chapters

  Gamze Erdem Turkelli, Stephanie de Moerloose and Joshua Curtis, 'Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations and International Financial Institutions', in Mark Gibney, Gamze Erdem Turkelli, Markus Krajewski and Wouter Vandenhole (eds.), The Routledge Handbook on Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations (Routledge, forthcoming 2022)

  Joshua Curtis, 'Bridging Governance Gaps with Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations: Accessing Home State Courts to End Childhood Obesity', in Amandine Garde, Joshua Cusrtis and Olivier De Schutter (eds.), Ending Childhood Obesity: A Challenge at the Crossroads of International; Human Rights and Economic Law (Edward Elgar, 2020)

  Amanine Garde, Joshua Curtis and Olivier De Schutter, 'Ending Childhood Obesity: Introducing the Issues and the Legal Challenge', in Amandine Garde, Joshua Cusrtis and Olivier De Schutter (eds.), Ending Childhood Obesity: A Challenge at the Crossroads of International; Human Rights and Economic Law (Edward Elgar, 2020)

  Joshua Curtis, Amandine Garde and Olivier De Schutter, 'Overcoming the Legal Challenge to End Childhood Obesity: Pathways Towards Positive Harmonization in Law and Governance', in Amandine Garde, Joshua Cusrtis and Olivier De Schutter (eds.), Ending Childhood Obesity: A Challenge at the Crossroads of International; Human Rights and Economic Law (Edward Elgar, 2020)

  Joshua Curtis and Shane Darcy, 'The Right to a Social and International Order for the Realisation of Human Rights: Article 28 of the Universal Declaration and International Cooperation', in David Keane and Yvonne McDermott (eds.), The Challenge of Human Rights: Past, Present and Future (Edward Elgar, 2012)

   

  Reports

  Aoife Daly, Yvonne McDermott and Joshua Curtis, Enhancing the Status of UN Treaty Rights in Domestic Settings, Report for the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission (March 2018)

  (available at https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/media/livacuk/law/2-research/ilhru/EHRC,Enhancing,the,Status,of,UN,Treaty,Rights.pdf)

  Joshua Curtis and John Reynolds, TTIP, ISDS and the Implications for Public Health in Ireland, Report for the Irish Cancer Society (July 2015)

  (available at http://edepositireland.ie/bitstream/handle/2262/90878/final_version_of_report_on_ttip_and_irish_public_health_policy.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y)

  
  Online publications

  Joshua Curtis, Merging Socio-Economic Rights and Heterodox Economics: Emancipatory and Transformative Potentials, Series on Economics and Law in Conversation, Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy, Centre for the Study of Human Rights, LSE (October 2016), www.lse.ac.uk/humanrights/thelab 

  Ha-Joon Chang in Conversation with Joshua Curtis, History, Law and the Myth of Economic Neutrality, Series on Economics and Law in Conversation, Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy, Centre for the Study of Human Rights, LSE (October 2016), www.lse.ac.uk/humanrights/thelab 

  Margaret Somers in Conversation with Joshua Curtis, Socially Embedding the Market and the Role of Law, Series on Economics and Law in Conversation, Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy, Centre for the Study of Human Rights, LSE (October 2016), www.lse.ac.uk/humanrights/thelab 

  Radhika Balakrishnan in Conversation with Joshua Curtis, Advancing Human Rights Through Economics, Series on Economics and Law in Conversation, Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy, Centre for the Study of Human Rights, LSE (October 2016), www.lse.ac.uk/humanrights/thelab 

• Professional Associations

  Professional bodies:

  Fellow of the United Kingdom Higher Education Academy (2020 - )

   

  Research networks:

  Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations (ETO)Consortium - Member of the Aceadmic Support Group and Focal Point on Financing for Development (2013 - )

  Institute for Global Law and Policy (Harvard Law School) Annual Workshop Alumni (2012 - )

  International Social and Economis Rights Project - Member (2012 - )

  Law and Development Research Network (Antwerp University) - Member (2017 - )

  UK Business and Human Rights Network - Member (2017 - )

  Global Governance and Transnational Human Rights Obligations Research Network - Member (2011 - 2014)

• Community Engagement

  Some external research activities and policy work

  Advisor to departments of the Government of Oman - advising on investment law as part of an expert team coordinated by the World Health Organization delivering technical advice and a national training workshop to build legal capacity to implement the WHO Recommendations on the Marketing of Foods and Non-Alcoholic Beverages to Children (2017)

  Academic Member and Focal Point on Financing for Development - ETO (Extraterritorial human rights obligations) Consortium (2014-present)

  Panel Co-convener - ‘Implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implications of Trade and Investment Agreements for the State Duty to Protect and Access to Remedy' - 4th United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights (2015)

  Advisor to the International Federation for Human Rights - Submission to the EU Ombudsman Regarding the Need for a Human Rights Impact Assessment of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (2015)

  Advisor to South Centre, Geneva - advising on extraterritorial human rights obligations, training for negotiators from the global South (2014-2016)

  Expert Member -Working Group updating the Tilburg Guiding Principles on Human Rights and International Financial Institutions - authored background papers on ‘Human Rights Impact Assessments and Decision-Making in the International Financial Institutions (IFIs)' and ‘Macro-Economic Policy and Human Rights Norms' - outcome published by Group leader; Willem van Genugten, The World Bank Group, the IMF and Human Rights: A Contextualised Way Forward (Intersentia 2015)

  Consultant/Delegate - Irish Centre for Human Rights - 2012 Annual Irish Department of Foreign Affairs NGO Consultation - authored ‘Irish Centre for Human Rights Submission to the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs in Response to the Review of the White Paper on Irish Aid' - conducted follow-up workshops for parliamentarians, civil servants and MEPs (2012)

   

Entry last updated: Tuesday, 16 Jan 2024

To link to this page, please use the following URL:  https://www.adelaide.edu.au/directory/joshua.curtis