Professor Zumbansen’s research is focused on private law theory, comparative and transnational law. He has supervised major research theses, LLM and PhD projects in corporate governance, international law and transnational private regulatory governance. One of his longstanding research interests has been in legal education and legal curriculum reform, with a particular emphasis on the enhancement of a more foundational as well as practice-oriented law training.

Professor Zumbansen is unable to accept any new PhD student applications for 18/19. 

Professor Zumbansen was born in Berlin and educated in Germany, France and the United States. Admitted to the bar in Germany, he studied philosophy and law in Germany and France before receiving an LLM from Harvard Law School, followed by a doctorate and the post-doctoral, Habilitation from Frankfurt’s Goethe University. Professor Zumbansen’s doctoral thesis won the Walter Kolb Memorial Prize for Best Doctorate in Law.

At Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto, he held a prestigious Canada Research Chair for a decade – first in the Comparative and Transnational Law of Corporate Governance and, since 2009, in Transnational Economic Governance and Legal Theory. He was also the founder of the interdisciplinary Critical Research Laboratory in Law & Society and has consistently contributed to domestic and international debates on legal education.

During his time at Osgoode Hall he served as Associate Dean Research, Graduate Studies and International Relations, Acting Chair of the Recruitment Committee and taught Canadian and comparative corporate and business law, private law theory, European, comparative and transnational law, and legal theory.

He has received two teaching awards in Canada and has held visiting professorships at Osgoode Hall, Idaho, Bremen, Bilbao and Oñati (Spain), Lucerne and St. Gallen (Switzerland), UCD Dublin, Javeriana (Bogotà), Melbourne, Lisbon and Yale Law School.

 In the summer of 2013, he was the inaugural Chair in Global Law at Tilburg Law School in The Netherlands and, in the fall of 2013, a Senior Research Scholar at Michigan Law School. At Osgoode, he was the founding director of the Comparative Research in Law and Political Economy Network (CLPE) and the Collaborative Urban Research Laboratory, two international and interdisciplinary research centres. He was, from 2000-2013, the founding co-editor in chief of the German Law Journal and has been, since 2012, the editor in chief of Transnational Legal Theory. He founded the CLPE Osgoode Hall Research Paper Series at the Social Science Research Network (SSRN).

Professor Zumbansen joined The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London in July 2014 as the inaugural Professor of Transnational Law and founding director of the Dickson Poon Transnational Law Institute.