Professor Raphael J. Heffron is Professor and Dean at the College of Law at Abu Dhabi University. He is an international expert on law and commerce in the areas of energy, climate change, sustainability, just transition and public policy issues. Professor Heffron is a qualified Barrister-at-Law and in 2020, he was appointed as Senior Counsel at Janson law firm in Brussels (Belgium). He is a graduate of both Oxford (MSc-Christ Church) and Cambridge (MPhil-Darwin & PhD-Trinity Hall) Universities (UK). He also holds degrees from the University of St. Andrews (MLitt) (UK), and Trinity College Dublin (BA, MA) (Ireland).
Professor Heffron's work has featured in the Top-2% Stanford-Elsevier Scientist List in 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024. He has published over 200 publications of different types and is the most cited scholar in his field worldwide for energy and just transition law and public policy (6000+ Scopus/11,500+ Google scholar) with translated work in multiple languages including Chinese, Italian, French, Spanish, Arabic and Persian. Professor Heffron has given just over 230 keynotes/guest lectures in 70 countries.
Professor Heffron's work is global, and in particular covers the EU, South-East Asia, Southern Africa, and Latin America. His work has received funding from a variety of sources including the European Union, UK Commonwealth Secretariat, USAID, the Asian Development Bank, French Regional Government Administration, UK national research councils (the ESRC and the EPSRC), the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (ERA-ACTOM), the British Academy and two European Commission Jean Monnet Professorship 2016-2019 and 2019-2022.
