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Expertise Summary
Professor Annamaria La Chimia read Law at the University of Rome La Sapienza and moved to England for her graduate studies. She completed an LLM in International Economic Law (2002) and a PhD (2006) at the School of Law University of Nottingham.
Professor La Chimia joined the School of Law as a lecturer in September 2006 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2014 and to Professor in 2019. At Nottingham she is the Director of the PPRG, a world leading center of research and teaching on Public Procurement Law and Policy. She is also a Research Fellow at Stellenbosch University (from January 2019) and a member of the steering Committee of the IEL Collective https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/research/centres/globe/ielcollective/.
Professor La Chimia is head of the Humanitarian and Development Procurement Unit and co-leader (with Georgopolou) of the Procurement and Human Rights Unit of the Public Procurement Research Group (PPRG). She is a founding member of the European Association on Public Private Partnership (EAPPP), a member of the Transatlantic Food Assistance Dialogue (TAFAD) and until 2018 was member of the steering Committee of the Learning Lab on Procurement and Human Rights.
Professor La Chimia is Co-Investigator for the Rising from the Depths projects, a two-million project funded by the AHRC-GCRF, and leader of the UoN Rights, Justice and Global Challenges Interdisciplinary Research Cluster. At Nottingham, Professor La Chimia is also the School's Equality officer and the co-director of the Equality and Diversity Program (where she also leads the School's Athena Swan initiatives). She is the convener for the LLM Specialism in Law and Development and she teaches on a range of modules at both UG, PG and Executive level.
Professor La Chimia has taught at various international institutions, including the Masters Degree Program on Human Development and Food Security at the Universita' degli Studi di Roma Tre (since 2004), the Masters Degree on Public Administration, University of Rome Tre (2006 and 2008); the Masters Degree on Procurement at the Stellenbosch University (2011) and at the International Master on Procurement at the Universita' Tor Vergata (2017). She was a Visiting Professor at the University LUISS Guido Carli of Rome (2010), at the University Statale of Milan (2015, and 2019, suspended due to COVID), at the University of Copenhagen, at the Danish Institute for Human Rights (2017) and at the University of Rome la Sapienza (2019, postponed to 2020 due to COVID).
Professor La Chimia's main research interests lie within the area of International Development, Public Procurement Law, International Trade Law and European Law. Her work has been sponsored by a range of institutions and she has received internal and external funding as both PI and Co-I: in 2019 she was awarded a BA-Levehulme Trust grant (as Principal Investigator) to conduct research on food procurement for schools and the right to food together with researchers from La Sapienza of Rome, in 2017 she was the recipient of a major AHRC-GCRF grant as Co-Investigator -the Rising from the Depths project, worth over 2-million £; in 2016 she received funding as Principal Investigator by the BA-Levehulme Trust to conduct research on procurement and Human Rights; in 2017 she was sponsored by the Nottingham Governance RPA as Principal Investigator to conduct research on discretion and the use of flexible procedures within the new EU procurement Directives, in 2016 she participated as Co-I in a project on aid an migration sponsored by the Rights and Justice RPA (with Daria Davitti); and in 2009 she received funding by the British Academy, again as PI, to carry out a comparative study of EU and USA food aid policies. In 2010 Professor La Chimia was awarded the prize "premio professionalita' 'Rocca D'Oro' Europa Leader," this prize is awarded under the patronage of the President of the Republic of Italy and is bestowed to academics, public officials and artists who excel in their field in Italy and abroad.
Professor La Chimia has done extensive research on tied aid policies in the context of EU law and international trade law, on aid effectiveness and food aid/food security. She is also interested in developing countries' procurement policies, aid harmonization, Sustainable Procurement and Human Rights, PPP/PFI (looking at aid privatization and the promotion of PPP in developing countries). More recently she has worked with Dr Daria Davitti on aid and migration and has started a new research initiative with Dr Jon Henderson on aid and cultural heritage.
Prior to joining the School of Law, Professor La Chimia worked as a lawyer in Italy where she qualified as a Barrister and Solicitor in 2002. She became a member of the Italian Bar and acted as counselor in front of the Italian Administrative Court, the Employment Tribunal and the High Court.
She has acted as an expert advisor and consultant for the World Bank, the UK Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI), for the German Agency for development cooperation (GIZ_, for the European Commission (DG Trade and DG Development), and she has worked as a consultant for the NGO ActionAid and the Commonwealth Secretariat. She has also participated in a SIGMA project on the review of the Romanian domestic public procurement legislation.
Professor La Chimia is the author of Tied Aid within the Framework of EU and WTO Law: the Imperative for Change (Hart 2013) the leading monograph on tied aid and has written extensively on development procurement, food aid and related topics publishing in prestigious edited collections and refereed journals such as the International and Comparative Law Quarterly, The European Law Review, the Public Procurement Law Review, the Journal of International Economic Law, the Trade Law and Development Journal, and the Irish Yearbook of International Law. Her most recent publication is the edited collection Public Procurement and Aid Effectiveness: a Roadmap under Construction (with Peter Trepte) published by Hart in 2019, an article on Sustainable Procurement published on the journal Sustainability (with Stoffel, Quinot and Carvelo) and an article on procurment and COVID-19 published on the PPLR. She is currently working on two edited collections on public procurement law, one with Arrowsmith, Butler and Yukins and one with Fiorentino to be published by Hart and by Il Mulino.
Professor Annamaria La Chimia
Laurea ("La Sapienza di Roma", Italy), LLM and PhD (Nottingham), Qualified Advocate -Barrister and Solicitor- (Italy) Director PPRG (Nottingham), founding member of EAPPP, member of TAFAD and member of IEL Collective.
Professor of Law and Development
Teaching Summary
Professor La Chimia teaches the following modules:
UG:
EU Law,
Law and Development: Approaches, Actors and issues
LLM:
Law, Development and the International Community
Executive LLM on procurement Law and Policy:
Procurement and Development
Research Summary
Her main research interests lie within the area of European Law (especially External Relations, Public Procurement, and Internal Market) as well as International Trade Law and Development policies.
She has done extensive research on tied aid policies in the context of EU law and international trade law. She is currently researching on food aid and food security, rural development, and agricultural trade liberalization within the context of the WTO. She is also interested in regional integration, developing countries' procurement policies, aid harmonization, and the development of the European Partnership Agreements (EPAS).
Recent Publications
LA CHIMIA A and TREPTE P, eds., 2019. Public procurement and aid effectiveness: a roadmap under construction 1st. Hart.
2018. Development Aid Procurement & the UNGPs on Business & Human Rights: challenges and opportunities to move towards ‘the new frontier of BUYING JUSTIC,. In: WILLIAMS-ELEGBE, S and QUINOT G, eds., Public Procurement Regulation for 21st century Africa Juta.
LA CHIMIA A., 2017. A new approach to implementing the 2014 public procurement Directives in Italy: ANAC’s soft law regulatory powers amidst uncertainty and need for clarity Public Procurement Law Review. 26(4), 165-186