Dr Yuka Kobayashi

Yuka Kobayashi is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in China and International Politics. She is currently on leave (academic year 2024-2025) as a British Academy Global Innovation Fellow in the German Council for Foreign Relations (DGAP) based at their Centre for Geopolitics, Geoeconomics and Technology. Previously, she was a junior research fellow at Oxford University, a visiting scholar at the World Trade Organization, and a visiting research professor at Nankai University.

Yuka studied law with a specialization in Public International Law at Kyoto University and completed an MPhil and DPhil in international relations at Oxford University. Her research brings together International Relations and International Law with fieldwork to examine trade and investment (Belt and Road Initiative/FDI/WTO), climate change/energy, human rights, and technology with particular focus on China. 

She is currently conducting research on China’s global governance and China’s economic activities abroad in Central Asia, Europe/Germany, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Island states.  Yuka also has a collaborative project on UK-Japan partnership with Yu Uchiyama of Tokyo University and is interested in broader questions of world order and disorder. She has advised various governments and international organizations on these issues, and was appointed as specialist advisor to the UK government in 2021, and served as an advisory board member of Stiftung Asienhaus from 2019 to 2021.

Expert witness to UK parliament

• Kobayashi, Yuka (2018) UK Parliament, Foreign Affairs Committee, Oral evidence for Inquiry into China and the International Rule Based System.
• Written Evidence for Expert Witness for Inquiry into China and the International Rule Based System (PDF)
• Summary of Kobayashi's submissions to the Foreign Affairs Committee Inquiry on China and the international rule-based systems
• Kobayashi's contributions on Belt and Road Initiative, trade, WTO in the Final report are in China and the Rules-Based International System Sixteenth Report of Session 2017–19 (PDF)