Maria Adele Carrai
Research Interest
Law, HistoryLegal history, Conceptual history, International relations, China foreign policy, US-China relations, China-EU relations, Law and development, Foreign direct investments
Maria Adele Carrai is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations and the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA) at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of St Cross College. She previously served as Assistant Professor of Global China Studies at NYU Shanghai and taught as an adjunct at NYU School of Law. She has been an Associate at the Harvard University Asia Center since 2021 and an Adjunct Associate Research Scholar at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute from 2019 to 2026.
Her research examines the history of international law in East Asia and investigates how China’s rise as a global power shapes norms and reconfigures the international order, with particular interests in sovereignty, extraterritoriality, and digital governance. She is the author of Sovereignty in China: A Genealogy of a Concept since 1840 (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and the forthcoming China’s Normative Power in Cyberspace (Routledge, 2026). She co-edited The China Questions 2: Critical Insights into US–China Relations (Harvard University Press, 2022) and The Cambridge History of International Law in Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2026). Her work has appeared in leading journals in international law and international relations.
She received her PhD from the University of Hong Kong, was awarded a three-year Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship at KU Leuven, and was a fellow at the Italian Academy at Columbia University, the Princeton–Harvard China and the World Program, the Max Weber Programme at the European University Institute, and a Global Houser Fellow at NYU School of Law.
Carrai is the founder and Executive Director of Mapping Global China, a research initiative that combines data and storytelling to build public-facing maps, datasets, and narrative outputs to better understand China’s global presence. The project has received support from the British Academy, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, and New York University (including NYU Shanghai). She has also a track record as an institution-builder and convener, developing collaborative research infrastructures and multi-stakeholder events that connect academic research with policy and public debate.
Publications
Carrai, Maria Adelle. Sovereignty in China, A Genealogy of a Concept Since 1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Carrai, Maria Adele, Jean-Christophe DeFraigne & Jan Wouters (ed.), The Belt and Road Initiative and Global Governance, Edward Elgar Publisher, February 2020.
China’s Malleable Sovereignty Along the Belt and Road Initiative: The Case of the 99-year Chinese Lease of Hambantota Port, N.Y.U. JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW & POLITICS 51 (2019).
Which Humanity? From Cultural to Racial Ethnocentrism: The Chinese Perspective on Universal History on the Threshold of the Twentieth Century TELOS 186 (Spring 2019).
Prospettive cinesi sulla storia del diritto internazionale, JOURNAL OF CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 38 (2019).
It Is Not the End of History: The Financing Institutions of the Belt and Road Initiative and the Bretton Woods System,
TRANSNATIONAL DISPUTE MANAGEMENT 3 (2017).
Learning Western Techniques ofEmpire: Republican China and the New Legal Framework for Managing Tibet, 4 LEIDEN
JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 30 (2017).
Current Chinese Approaches to a Global History of International Law, 22 STORICA 64 (2017).
Yijie ‘quanwei’: zai ‘zhuquan’ yu ‘tianxia’ zhong xunqiu gong du xing, 译介「权威」: 在「主权」与「天下」中寻求公 度性, 2 ZHENGZHI SIXIANG SHI 政治思想史 7 (2016).
China and the ‘Third World’ in International Law – On Bandung and Beyond, in Ignacio de la Rasilla, THE ENIGMA AND CHINA AND INTERNATIONAL LAW. HISTORICAL, CONTEMPORARY AND PROSPECTIVE EXPLORATIONS, Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2021
Measuring China’s influence in Europe: Contextualizing the impact ofthe Belt and Road Initiative, in Suthiphand Chirathivat, CHINA’S RISE, VOL. 3, World Scientific Publishing, forthcoming 2020.
Chinese Investments Screening Mechanisms and its New Foreign Direct Investment Law, in Giulio Napolitano, THE GLOBAL RUSH TO FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT SCREENING, Bologna, Il Mulino, forthcoming 2020.
China and the Histories of International Law, in Chris Shei (ed.), THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF CHINESE STUDIES, Routledge, forthcoming 2020.
La Jurisdicción del Mar: Reclamaciones chinas a derechos históricos en el Mar del Sur de China, in Basia Steipen (ed.), MARE NOSTRUM-NUESTRO MAR: ESTUDIOS SOBRE EL DERECHO DEL MARE, Tirant lo Blanch, 2019.
It Is Not the End of History: The Financing Institutions of the Belt and Road Initiative and the Bretton Woods System, in Julien Chaisse and Jędrzej Górski, THE BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE: LAW, ECONOMICS AND POLITICS, Brill, 2018.
China’s Unilateral Abrogation of the Sino-Belgian Treaty: A Case Study of a Deviant Transplantation, in Michael Ng and Zhao Yun (ed.), CHINESE LEGAL REFORM AND THE GLOBAL LEGAL ORDER: ADOPTION AND ADAPTATION, Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Translating Authority: In Search of Commensurability between Tianxia World Order and Western Sovereignty, in Lawrence Wang-chi Wong (ed.), TRANSLATION AND MODERNIZATION IN EAST ASIA IN THE 19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURY, Hong Kong: Research Centre for Translation and the Chinese University Press, 2017.
Asian Values, in Andreas Joh. Wiesand, Kalliopi Chainoglou and Anna Śledzińska-Simon (ed.), CULTURE AND HUMAN RIGHTS, THE WROCLAW COMMENTARIES, De Gruyter Publishers, 2016.
Zhongguoshi ziranfa: lun lizuowei ziranfa duiyingti de juxian, 中国式自然法:论”礼”作为自然法对应体的局限 [Chinese Natural Law: On the Limits of the Association of Li to Natural Law] in Qu Wensheng (ed.), LEGAL TRANSLATION AND LEGAL TRANSPLANTATION, China Law Press, 2014.
Review of Natalie Lichtenstein, A Comparative Guide to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, 1 PACIFIC AFFAIRS JOURNAL 92 (2019).
Confucianism reconstructed: the violence of history and the making of constitutionalism in East Asia (review essay of Jiang Qing. A Confucian Constitutional Order: How China’s Ancient Past Can Shape Its Political Future. Princeton University Press, 2012 & Son Ngoc Bui. Confucian Constitutionalism in East Asia. Routledge Law in Asia, 2016) 1 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 16 (2018).
Marta Cartabia and Andrea Simoncini (eds.), Pope Benedict XVI’s Legal Thought, A Dialogue on the Foundation of Law, Cambridge University Press, 2015, L’IRCOCERVO. RIVISTA ELETTRONICA ITALIANA DI METODOLOGIA GIURIDICA, TEORIA GENERALE DEL DIRITTO E DOTTRINA DELLO STATO 2 (2016).
Italy joins China’s Belt and Road Initiative: A Grand Awakening for the EU? 4 CHINA’S WORLD 1 (2019)
Chinese Weaponized Investments and the Rise of Screening Mechanisms in Europe, OXFORD UNIVERSITY, CHINA LAW AND DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH BRIEF NO. 6/2019, https://cld.web.ox.ac.uk/file/430556
Conversation on EU-China relations, ChinaFile Conversation (April 2019)
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From Defensive to Assertive: China’s White Paper on Human Rights, Verfassungsblog (March 2019) https://verfassungsblog.de/from-defensive-to-assertive-chinas-white-paper-on-human-rights/
Will the Belt and Road Initiative change China’s stance on sovereignty and non-interference?, GlobTaxGov, Leiden University (Feb. 8, 2019) https://globtaxgov.weblog.leidenuniv.nl/2019/02/08/will-the-belt-and-road-initiative-change-chinas-stance- on-sovereignty-and-non-interference/
The China Model and its Discourses, 3 CHINA’S WORLD 2 (2018).
In the Eye of the Beholder: The China Model as a discourse, Fairbank Center Blog, Harvard University (May 2018) https://medium.com/fairbank-center/in-the-eye-of-the-beholder-the-china-model-as-a-discourse-fbf95e06361c
Sogni cosmopoliti: il costituzionalismo globale e le sfide dell’eccezionalismo cinese, 8 ORIZZONTE CINA 5 (2017)
China’s Dream of Great Rejuvenation: Deconstructing Its Historical Myth, 2 CHINA’S WORLD 2 (2017).
Global constitutionalism and Chinese exceptionalism, EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE WORKING PAPERS (2016).
Il riconoscimento del Market Economy Status alla Cina e l’interpretazione dell’Art. 15 del Protocollo di Accesso: sfide e possibilità per l’Unione Europea, OSSERVATORIO COSTITUZIONALE AIC (2016).