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Poul Fritz Kjær

Professor

Emner
Geopolitik Sikkerhed Globalisering Værdikæde Tyskland EU-ret Europa

Primary research areas

Trans­formation and Con­flict in Glob­al So­ci­ety
How has glob­al so­ci­ety changed over time? And what are the drivers of change?
Glob­al Value Chain Law
How have value chains changed over time and what is the role of law in reg­u­lat­ing them?
European in­teg­ra­tion in the con­text of glob­al so­ci­ety
What does glob­al trans­form­a­tions mean for the European and its polit­ic­al eco­nomy?

Provid­ing the big pic­ture in a very con­crete sense

My research  

- Gives sense to the dramatic changes of our time 

- Situates current developments in history 

- Links economic, legal and political developments 

Publications

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august 2025

Three Futures of the World

‘Armageddon’, ‘Brazilianization’ or ‘Regulatory Hegemony’

Poul Fritz Kjær, Professor

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25. juni 2025

Den vigtigste transfor­ma­tion af erhvervs­li­vets vilkår siden Anden Verdenskrig

Poul Fritz Kjær, Professor

Erik Rasmussen
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juni 2025

Globalism Versus Universalism

The Legal Structuration of Global Commerce from Colonial Law to Global Value Chain Law and Beyond

Poul Fritz Kjær, Professor

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I am in­ter­ested in how so­ci­et­ies – glob­al – na­tion­al or loc­al – emerges and evolve with a par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on their re­si­li­ence and the role of law in such pro­cesses

I hold degrees in law (European University Institute – Florence), sociology (Goethe University Frankfurt) and political science (Aarhus University) working on issues in the intersection between economy, law and politics. 

Currently I am leading the European Research Council Advanced Grant Project ‘Global Value Chain Law: Constituting Connectivity, Contracts and Corporations’ investigating the legal structuration of value chains in a historical perspective and in the context of the emergence of global society. 

Previously I directed the European Research Council Starting Grant Project ‘Institutional Transformation in European Political Economy. A Socio-legal Approach’ focusing on the transnational imprint on the emergence of national political economy regimes and national societies in Europe.

I have been a fellow at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study and at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study and visiting scholar at, among others, Harvard University, LSE and Sciences Po in Paris.

I am a member of the Academia Europaea, the European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences and recipient of the Danish Ministry of Education and Research Elite Research Prize 2023.

Re­cent Pub­lic­a­tions

Recent publications are on the law of political economy, transformative law, the concept of norms and societal resilience in the context of geopolitical change.

  • ‘Three Futures of the World: ‘Armageddon’,‘Brazilianization’ or ‘Regulatory Hegemony’, Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law, 32, 4, 431 – 38, 2025.
  • ‘From Conflicts Law to Transformative Law’: Facing ‘Fragmented Globalisation’, European Law Open, 4, 1, 104 – 17, 2025
  • ‘Five Variations of Transformative Law. Beyond Private and Public Interests’, Erasmus Law Review, 2, 17, 140 - 46, 2023.
  • ‘What is Transformative Law?’, European Law Open, 1, 4, 760-780, 2022
  • ‘The Law of Political Economy as Transformative Law:  A New Approach to the Concept and Function of Law’, Global Perspectives, 2, 1, 1 – 17, 2021.
  • The Law of Political Economy: Transformation in the Function of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Recent research projects

Glob­al Value Chain Law: Con­sti­tut­ing Con­nectiv­ity, Con­tracts and Cor­por­a­tions (GLOB­AL­VALUE)

A European Re­search Coun­cil Ad­vanced Grant pro­ject at CBS. The goal is to de­vel­op a new so­cio-leg­al ap­proach to GVC Law, which gov­erns the com­plex leg­al in­fra­struc­tures of glob­al eco­nom­ic activ­ity.