Associate Professor Emma Aisbett

ANU College of Law, Governance and Policy

Emma Aisbett an Associate Professor at the ANU School of Law and Associate Director (Research) for the Zero-Carbon Energy for the Asia Pacific Grand Challenge at ANU.

Emma is a world-leading expert on international investment agreements (investment treaties) and is leading projects with the Australian Government on embedded emissions accounting for trade. She is also a member of the ARC College of Experts and a Judge of the Australian Eureka Prize for Sustainability Research.

She has degrees in chemical engineering (UNSW with University Medal), environmental management (Oxford) and economics (UC Berkeley). She combines her interdisciplinary understanding with extensive government and industry engagement to develop solutions to problems at the intersection of international economic regulation and the environment, as well as international organisations including the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, World Economic Forum, WWF, OECD, and UNCTAD.

Her work on international investment agreements has been published in leading journals in political science, economics and international law, and she has been an invited expert on the topic at both the OECD and the United Nations Commission on Trade and Development.

In 2021 she was awarded the prestigious John H Jackson Prize for most significantly breaking new ground and adding new insights to the study & understanding of International Economic Law.

Emma’s current research explores how to make trade and investment law and green industrial policy mutually supportive of each other, and of the net-zero transition. She is currently collaborating with the Australian Government and the World Bank, researching trade-related climate policies including hydrogen/ammonia certification and embedded emissions accounting frameworks. She is Theme Lead for Market Activation in the ARC Industrial Transition Research Hub on Carbon Utilisation and Recycling and since January 2026 has been Research Lead for HILT’s Program 3 – Facilitating Transformation.

Emma can speak to questions about policy and law related to international trade and investment, particularly as it pertains to climate/environment. She can also speak to the role of trade in the global energy transition, particularly the export opportunities for Australia such as green hydrogen, steel and aluminium.