Maria Adele Carrai is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations and the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA) at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of St Cross College. She previously served as Assistant Professor of Global China Studies at NYU Shanghai and taught as an adjunct at NYU School of Law. She has been an Associate at the Harvard University Asia Center since 2021 and an Adjunct Associate Research Scholar at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute since 2019.
Her research examines the history of international law in East Asia and investigates how China’s rise as a global power shapes norms and reconfigures the international order, with particular interests in sovereignty, extraterritoriality, and digital governance. She is the author of Sovereignty in China: A Genealogy of a Concept since 1840 (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and the forthcoming China’s Normative Power in Cyberspace (Routledge, 2026). She co-edited The China Questions 2: Critical Insights into US–China Relations (Harvard University Press, 2022) and The Cambridge History of International Law in Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2026). Her work has appeared in leading journals in international law and international relations.
She received her PhD from the University of Hong Kong, was awarded a three-year Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship at KU Leuven, and was a fellow at the Italian Academy at Columbia University, the Princeton–Harvard China and the World Program, the Max Weber Programme at the European University Institute, and a Global Houser Fellow at NYU School of Law.
Carrai is the founder and Executive Director of Mapping Global China, a research initiative that combines data and storytelling to build public-facing maps, datasets, and narrative outputs to better understand China’s global presence. The project has received support from the British Academy, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, and New York University (including NYU Shanghai). She has also a track record as an institution-builder and convener, developing collaborative research infrastructures and multi-stakeholder events that connect academic research with policy and public debate.
A TED Fellow, she delivered a talk at TED Headquarters and frequently provides expert commentary to a variety of international media, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, the BBC, The Atlantic, Vox, France 24, El País, and the South China Morning Post.
