Thomas Kadner Graziano

Visiting Professor and Distinguished Fellow
Notre Dame London Law Programme

Home Affiliation: Professor of Law at the University of Geneva

Thomas Kadner Graziano is a Full Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Geneva, Director of the Department of Private International Law, and Director of the Certificate in Transnational Law (CDT) Program.

He studied law at the Universities of Frankfurt and Geneva, and comparative law and/or languages at the universities of Salamanca, Strasbourg, London and Trento (Italy). He holds a doctoral degree from Goethe-University Frankfurt, an LL.M degree from Harvard Law School, and a professorial degree from Humboldt-University Berlin. He has been a full-time professor of law at the University of Geneva since 2001. He also teaches as a regular visiting professor to KU Leuven since 2015.

He has previously worked as a faculty member of the DUKE-Geneva Institute in Transnational Law (2004, 2010) and has held numerous visiting professorships, teaching comparative law at the Universities of Potsdam, Poitiers (2006), Florida (2006, 2007-08, 2008, 2010), Exeter (2007-08), Kaunas (VMU, 2009, 2013, 2014), Vilnius (MRU, 2014), Lausanne (2015), KU Leuven (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019), Renmin (People's) University of China (Beijing and Suzhou, 2016, 2019), and has taught classes on comparative law and methodology at the Universities of Johannesburg (2015), Luxemburg (2016, 2017), Leiden (2019) and Saint-Etienne (2019).

He acted as a member of the Swiss delegation at the Hague Conference on Private International Law and as a member of the Working Group and Drafting Committee on International Contracts at the Hague Conference. He is fellow at the European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law (ECTIL, Vienna), is one of the founding members of the European Association of Private International Law (EAPIL), is member of the Council of the European Law Institute (ELI), and acts as one of the speakers for the European Law Academy (ERA, Trier). He has worked as an expert on private international law and comparative law for the European Parliament and in international proceedings (e.g. before the UN Security Council’s Compensation Commission and in international commercial arbitration proceedings in Central Europe and the Middle East).

His main fields of research include comparative contract and tort law, Swiss, European and comparative private international law, and international litigation. He publishes in English, French, and German.