Academic Profile

Julia Black is Professor of Law and Regulation at Oxford University and also holds a number of external roles.  She is a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Science and Technology, a non-executive director of the Financial Conduct Authority, an External Member of the Bank of England’s Financial Markets Infrastructure Committee, a member of the Board of the Courtauld Institute of Art.  From 2021-2025, she was President of the British Academy, the UK’s national academy for humanities and social sciences. 

Prior to becoming Warden, she was a Professor of Law and Regulation at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she also held a number of senior executive roles, including Pro Vice Chancellor of Research from 2014 to 2019 and interim Vice Chancellor from 2016 to 2017, and Strategic Director of Innovation from 2019 to 2024. She is currently a visiting Professor at the LSE Law School.

Julia completed her first degree in Jurisprudence and her DPhil at Oxford University and joined the LSE Law Department of the LSE in 1994. Her primary research interest is the legitimacy and dynamics of regulatory systems, including transnational and non-state regulators. She has written extensively on regulatory issues in several areas and advised policymakers, consumer bodies, law reform bodies and regulators on issues of institutional design and regulatory policy in the UK and overseas over many years. She has received grants from the British Academy, Leverhulme Trust, the ESRC and the Canadian SSRC.  She served as an independent Board member of the Solicitors Regulation Authority from January 2014 to December 2018 and chaired its Policy Committee. From 2017 to 2023, Julia was Senior Independent Member of the Board of the UK Research and Innovation Council    

She has been a visiting fellow at the University of Sydney, All Souls College, Oxford and in 2014 was the Sir Frank Holmes Visiting Professor in Public Policy at Victoria University, Wellington, NZ. She was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2015 and an Honorary Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, in 2017. She received a lifetime achievement award from the Standing Group on Regulatory Governance of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) in 2016.  She was awarded a CBE in 2020 for services to the study of law and regulation and a DBE in 2025 for services to research in social sciences, humanities and the arts.