Maria Adele Carrai is a Max Weber Fellow in Law at the European University Institute. After spending a year as a visiting doctoral researcher at NYU, she received her PhD in international law from the University of Hong Kong, where she was a Hong Kong PhD Fellow and a Swire Scholar. Her dissertation, titled A Genealogy of Sovereignty in China, 1840-today, investigates how the concept of sovereignty was appropriated and used by Chinese intellectuals and diplomats from the end of the Qing dynasty, emphasizing how such appropriation was essential for Chinese modern history.

She was trained as a sinologist and political scientist, receiving her education in Italy at the University of Rome “La Sapienza,” University Ca’ Foscari of Venice and University of Bologna, in the United Kingdom at the School of Oriental and African Studies and China at the China University of Political Science and Law and Central University of Finance and Economics.

Her primary research focus is the history of international law in China within a global history framework, and how today China can influence the international legal order in the making.