Julia Black

Julia Black is Strategic Director of Innovation and Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Julia joined LSE as a lecturer in 1994, having completed her first degree in Jurisprudence and her DPhil at Oxford University. She was LSE’s Pro Director of Research from 2014-19 and interim Director of LSE from 2016-17.

Her primary research interest is in the dynamics and legitimacy of regulatory systems. She has had a British Academy / Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship, been a Visiting Fellow at the University of Sydney and at All Souls College, Oxford, and in 2014 was the Sir Frank Holmes Visiting Professor in Public Policy at the University of Victoria, Wellington. She has written extensively on regulatory issues in a number of areas, and has advised policy makers, consumer bodies and regulators on issues of institutional design and regulatory policy.

Julia has a range of external activities. She is an External Member of the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Committee and of the Bank’s Financial Markets Infrastructure Board, Senior Independent member of the Board of UK Research and Innovation, the UK’s main research funding body, a member of the Council of Science and Technology, on the Board of the Courtauld Institute of Art, and a director of Zinc, a social sciences, mission based incubator. She is also President of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences, taking up the role in July 2021.

Julia's principal research interest is to explore the nature, dynamics and legitimacy of regulatory regimes, both state and non-state. She also specialises in financial services regulation, and is interested in the regulation of risk, particularly in biotechnology, and in public law.