Taylor John

Dr St John is interested in global economic governance and economic diplomacy. Her research to date has focused on how foreign investors and states resolve disputes. Her monograph, The Rise of Investor–State Arbitration: Politics, Law, and Unintended Consequences, traced the growth of this form of arbitration from the 1950s to the 1990s. It co-won the International Political Economy Best Book Award from the International Studies Association. Most of the underlying archival documents are available for download from the Qualitative Data Repository here.

At the moment, she is researching processes to reform investor–state arbitration, which is also called ISDS. (Curious about what ISDS is? This BBC Radio 4 documentary, Company v Country, provides a good introduction, and Season 2, Episode 2 of The Arbitration Station takes on "founding myths" of investor-state arbitration.)

With Anthea Roberts, she writes a series of blogs on the ISDS reform negotiations taking place within United Nations Commission on International Trade Law Working Group III, available here on EJIL Talk! website. Some of these blogs, for instance this one envisioning a flexible framework, or this co-authored paper for the ISDS Academic Forum, focus on institutional design issues. She is particularly interested in questions involving institutional design, international organisations, and multilateralism; within international relations theory, she is especially interested in historical institutionalism and complexity theory.

Dr St John is also interested in the role of individuals within global economic governance (and IR theory); she and Geoffrey Gertz are currently working on a project investigating three individuals and the outsize roles they played in founding the private sector arms of the World Bank.

As part of the LEGINVEST project funded by the Norwegian Research Council, she is collaborating with Tarald Laudal Berge on research into national investment laws (or you can listen to this research being presented).

Education

• DPhil (PhD) University of Oxford (2008 — 2014)
• MSc University of Oxford (2007 — 2008)
• BA The College of Idaho (2004 — 2007)

Companies

• Lecturer/Assistant Professor in International Relations University of St Andrews (2018)
• Postdoctoral Research Fellow PluriCourts (2016 — 2018)
• Fellow in International Political Economy The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) (2015 — 2016)
• Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Global Economic Governance Blavatnik School of Government (2014 — 2015)

Skills

• International Relations
• Qualitative Research