Natasha Affolder

Natasha Affolder is a Professor and a former Associate Dean Research and International at the Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia. She is a leading scholar in transnational environmental law whose research explores some of the most challenging and complex issues of our time. Her recent scholarship has sought to reveal and to challenge the marginalization of environmental law in legal practice and scholarship and to creatively expand the methods for studying environmental law and its global movements. She is the recipient of numerous awards including, most recently, the 2019 Richard Macrory Prize for the Best Article published in the Journal of Environmental Law.

A sought-after and frequent panelist, keynote speaker, and commentator, Professor Affolder has put her scholarly expertise to work as an advisor to indigenous communities, environment and development NGO’s, and governments on multiple continents. She was a lawyer in private practice in Boston, Massachusetts with the firms Hill & Barlow, and (what is now) DLA Piper. She also held a research associate position at Harvard Business School and consulted for Oxfam International, working to integrate gender and development law perspectives in the negotiations leading to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Prior to beginning her professional career in legal practice and academia, Dr. Affolder completed a Bachelor of Civil Law (First Class) and a doctorate in law at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

• Transnational Law
• Sustainable Development Law
• Legal Ethics and Professionalism
• International Business Transactions

Natasha Affolder, "An Unknown Past, an Unequal Present, and an Uncertain Future: Transnational Environmental Law through Three Research Challenges" in Veerle Heyvaert & Leslie-Anne Duvic-Paoli, eds, Research Handbook on Transnational Environmental Law, [forthcoming in 2020].

Natasha Affolder, "Transnational Climate Law" in Peer Zumbansen, ed, Oxford Handbook of Transnational Law (Oxford University Press) [forthcoming in 2020].

Natasha Affolder, "Contagious Environmental Lawmaking" (2019) 31:2 J Envtl L 187. This article was awarded the Richard Macrory Prize for the best article in the Journal of Environmental Law in 2019.

Natasha Affolder, "Transnational Environmental Law’s Missing People" (2019) 8(3) Transnat'l Envtl L 463.

Natasha Affolder, "Transnational Law as Unseen Law" in Peer Zumbansen, ed, The Many Lives of Transnational Law: Critical Engagements with Jessup’s Bold Proposal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Natasha Affolder, “Transnational Carbon Contracting: Why Law’s Invisibility Matters” in A Claire Cutler & Thomas Dietz, eds, The Politics of Private Transnational Governance by Contract (London: Routledge, 2017) 215.