Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Studies; Fellow at St. Cross College

Professor Erie’s interdisciplinary work stimulates conversations between law and anthropology to study the procedural aspects of domestic and cross-border commercial dispute resolution. In particular, he investigates the emergence and reconciliation of conflicts of law and normative pluralism in the course of increasing intersections of non-liberal values and Anglo-American common law.

His current research project examines “legal hubs,” sub-national jurisdictions that develop and implement their own procedural law for cross-border commercial dispute resolution. Against the backdrop of protectionist movements in the UK, Europe and the U.S. and increasing Chinese outbound investment, legal hubs, including those in London, Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai, invite re-evaluation and sharpening of the orthodox understanding of international private law, including, in particular, concepts such as governing law, jurisdiction and enforcement.

His current project builds on his previous work on disputing and plural normative systems in China. His book China and Islam: The Prophet, the Party, and Law (Cambridge University Press, 2016), based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in northwest China, is the first ethnography of Islamic law in China with a focus on the substantive and procedural conflicts between shari’a and Chinese state law.