Dr Francisco Quintana

Lecturer in Global Law

PhD in Law (University of Cambridge); LLM (Harvard Law School); LLM Public International Law (London School of Economics and Political Science, with Distinction); Abogado (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella)

Email: Francisco.Quintana@ed.ac.uk

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Dr Francisco J. Quintana is Lecturer in Global Law at the University of Edinburgh. He is also Associate Editor at the European Journal of International Law (EJIL).

Francisco is a scholar of international and global law. He draws on history, geopolitics, and political economy to show how small and medium powers use law to reshape the global distribution of power and resources.

Francisco is engaged in two major projects:

• He is working on a monograph based on his doctoral research at the University of Cambridge. The book examines the rise of human rights alongside the decline of international law as an ambitious language of world-making, with a focus on Latin America.
• He is also developing a new research agenda that explores whether and how emerging powers are changing global economic law and governance. The first article from this research, ‘Dollar Dominance, De-Dollarization, and International Law’ has recently been published in the Journal of International Economic Law.

His work has appeared or is forthcoming in leading journals such as the European Journal of International Law, the American Journal of International Law, the Journal of International Economic Law, the International Journal of Constitutional Law, and the Journal of the History of International Law. He co-edited the special issue ‘Bogotá at 75’ in the Journal of the History of International Law (2024). For wider audiences he has written for newspapers including The New York Times and contributes regularly to blogs such as EJIL:Talk! and Opinio Juris. He is often interviewed by the media on issues of international law and global politics.

Francisco was trained in the United Kingdom, the United States, Argentina, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. He holds a PhD in Law from the University of Cambridge, an LLM from Harvard Law School (where he received two Dean’s Scholar Prizes), an LLM in Public International Law (with Distinction) from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Law Degree (Abogado) from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (UTDT). His work has been recognised by major fellowships, including a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, a Chevening Scholarship, two Fulbright Fellowships, and a Lacroze De Fortabat Fellowship. He was also granted the Award for Academic Excellence by the Buenos Aires Bar Association.

At the University of Edinburgh, Francisco focuses on delivering and shaping the new Global Law LLB.

Before joining Edinburgh, he was a Florence-Geneva Fellow at the Geneva Graduate Institute and a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute. He brought over a decade of teaching experience at institutions such as the Geneva Graduate Institute, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, and the University of Cambridge.

Francisco regularly organises interdisciplinary events that connect scholars across geographical, epistemic, and disciplinary communities. He is an active member of the Latin American Society of International Law (LASIL-SLADI), where he has served on the Executive Committee and twice on the Organising Committee for its Biennial Conferences.

Beyond his work at EJIL, he has held editorial roles at EJIL: Talk!, the Latin American and Caribbean Journal of International Law, and the Cambridge International Law Journal. He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Revista Latinoamericana de Derecho Internacional.

Francisco also has practical experience in international law and politics. He has contributed to legal teams handling cases before international courts on major issues such as climate change and crimes against humanity. Early in his career, he worked across the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of government in Argentina.

PhD supervision interests

Francisco is interested in supervising postgraduate research in the areas of international law, global law and governance, law and geopolitics, history and theory of international law, law and political economy, regionalism, TWAIL, and beyond.

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