Susan K. Sell is a RegNet Professor. She earned her PhD in Political Science at the University of California – Berkeley. She taught at Pomona College and the Claremont Graduate School before joining the George Washington University. There, she was a Professor of Political Science and International Affairs. She served as Director of the Institute for Global and International Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington from 2007-2012.

She has published a number of books, including Private Power, Public Law: the Globalization of Intellectual Property Rights; this was translated into and published in Chinese in 2007 and in Korean in 2009. With Deborah Avant and Martha Finnemore she co-edited Who Governs the Globe? (Cambridge University Press, 2010). With Owain Williams she co-edited a special issue of Review of International Political Economy on the Global Political Economy of Health.

She has published numerous articles and book chapters and serves on the editorial boards of the Review of International Political Economy; the European Journal of International Relations, and Global Governance.

She serves on the Board of Geneva-based IP-Watch, a reporting service targeted at under-resourced negotiating delegations. Professor Sell has been a consultant for the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and the World Health Organization. In 2015-2016 she was appointed to the Expert Advisory Group for the United Nations Secretary General’s High-level Panel on Public Health and Access to Medicines.

Research interests

• International political economy
• Trade
• Economic development
• Intellectual property
• Investment

She focuses on the politics of intellectual property, trade, investment and private power.