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Staff profile

Overview

Dr Anca Chirita

Associate Professor of Competition Law

Affiliations
AffiliationTelephone
Associate Professor of Competition Law in the Durham Law School+44 (0) 191 33 42860

Biography

Dr Anca D. Chirita is an Associate Professor (Reader) of Competition Law. Her research has been published in world-leading international journals such as Boston University Journal of Science & Technology Law, William & Mary Business Law Review (Virginia), Loyola Consumer Law Review (Chicago), International & Comparative Law Quarterly, Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies, Journal of European Legal Studies (Zeitschrift für europarechtliche Studien), European Law Review, Irish Journal of European Law, World Competition Law and Economics Review, European Competition Journal, European Competition Law Review, Competition Law Review, Oxford Competition Law, Antitrust Chronicle (Competition Policy International), Network Law Review (Stanford DR) and with Springer, Hart, Elgar, Nomos. She is particularly interested in the legal categorisation of abuse of digital dominance as well as AI dominance including mergers and on abuse of dominance more generally (invited to the European Commission's Workshop on the draft Article 102 Guidelines on Exclusionary Abuses).

For 16 years, she has taught Competition Law, having established the undergraduate teaching of competition law as well as designed the postgraduate course (e.g., 175 competition law students in 2026/2027; 124 in 2025/2026; 180 in 2024/2025). She has also taught Contract Law. Before joining DLS, she was a law student in Germany (2004-2011) and worked in Belgium for the European Commission (2007/2008).

Her research has been frequently quoted, inter alia, by the Court of Justice of the European Union in Regio Jet (abuse of dominance), European Commission's DG COMP Report; EC Director-General for Competition Speech; UK Parliament: House of Lords; OECD; German Federal Ministry for the Economic Affairs and Climate Action;  German Federal Ministry for the Economic Affairs and Energy; South Africa Competition Commission; International Competition Network (ICN) on Unilateral Conduct etc.

Her research focuses on:

She has been invited as peer-reviewer for CES (Columbia University: for conferences held in Philadelphia, Glasgow, Chicago and Madrid) and for various journals such as the Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies, Oxford Journal of Competition Law and Economics, Oxford Journal of Antitrust Enforcement, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal, Competition Law Review, Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies, Journal of European Consumer and Market Law, Poverty & Public Policy (Wiley) etc; for books with Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Hart, Routledge etc.; and for funding applications of the European Research Council, British Academy, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Carnegie Trust and Hong Kong Research Grants Council. 

She has presented her research at numerous events; e.g., the University College London, the Law Society, Chatham House, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., Berkeley, Sciences Po, Rovinj with four EU judges etc. Durham events are available here.

Outside academia (2017 to 2022): Non-Governmental Advisor to the International Competition Network for the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition for the Unilateral Conduct Working Group and Cartels Working Group. Prior to joining the Law School, she was a PhD fellow of the Adenauer Foundation at the Europa-Institute, Saarland University, Faculty of Law and Economics. Her PhD in competition law was supervised by Professors Helmuth Schröter and Torsten Stein and awarded ‘summa cum laude’. During her PhD, she worked as a national expert with the College of Europe, Bruges (DG COMP project 2010/11), as a trainee with the Monopolies Commission in Bonn, and as a Blue Book trainee with the European Commission in Brussels. Previously, she completed the LL.M advanced diploma in Saarbrücken with a triple specialism in competition law, human rights and world trade law (examinations in German, English and French).

Academic citizenship:

  • 2021 DLS’s Dissertation Committee
  • 2017-2021 DLS Chair of Ethics and Data Protection
  • 2016-2021 DLS’s Research Committee
  • 2016-2019 Co-chair of the DLS-DUBS’s Ethics Committee
  • 2017-2021 Faculty of Health and Social Sciences Ethics Committee
  • 2018-2019 Co-Director of the Institute of Commercial and Corporate Law
  • 2016-2017 Deputy Director of Research Impact
  • 2016-2017 Deputy Chair of the Ethics and Data Protection Peer Review.
Research Supervision

I hold an LLB degree in law, an LLM in law with specialisation in competition law and a PhD in competition law. I welcome MJur/PhD supervision in the following areas of competition law (UK, EU) and US antitrust law:

  • Abuse of dominance

  • The wider goals of competition law

  • Algorithmic price manipulation and discrimination

  • Data combinations in unilateral conduct and in data-driven mergers

  • Excessive pricing.

Primary supervisions: Lyuxing Tao, Chris Sherwin, Xiaoran Sun

Completions (3): R Wieser (MJur), G Bandi (PhD secondary), Ahmed Saim Pehlivanli (PhD primary).

External MPhil/PhD degree examinations (4): University of Oxford (2015, 2018, 2019), KCL (2017).

External examiner: Edinburgh Law School (2021/2022).

Undergraduate and postgraduate supervisions:

  • Digital monopolies;
  • Artificial intelligence-driven competition (agorithmic discrimination, dynamic pricing, abuse of consumer data);
  • Fairness and consistency in competition law and the public interest;
  • Mergers in digital, media, pharmaceuticals, robotics markets;
  • Sustainable competition.

Supervised dissertations published in De Lege Ferenda (Cambridge Law Review, Durham Law Review, European Competition Journal, World Competition, Commonwealth Law Bulletin, European Competition Law Review.

Research Grants

Anca is a recipient of prestigious academic scholarships:

  • RIF £2,694
  • DIBS £5,867
  • CELS €2,100
  • DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) fellowship
  • Dr. Friedrich-Feldbausch-Stiftung Prize, Vereinigung der Freunde der Universität des Saarlandes, Adenauer Stiftung
  • College of Europe, Bruges, competition law expert for a project funded by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition
  • Adenauer Foundation doctoral fellowship
  • EC Blue Book traineeship
  • Federal Foreign Office Scholarship (Auswärtiges Amt).

Research interests

  • Competition law (UK/EU) and US antitrust law, policy and economics
  • Abuse of a dominant position, mergers and anticompetitive restraints
  • Digital monopolies, data-driven mergers and artificial intelligence
  • Competition policy and the intersection of competition law with consumer law and sustainability

Esteem Indicators

  • 2023: Selected research citations:
    • Advocate-General of the Court of Justice of the European Union: Opinion (Case RegioNet, May 5, 2022) Springer (2017)
    • European Commission's Directorate-General for Competition (competition authority): DG COMP Report (2016) ECLR (2012); EC Director-General for Competition Speech on the Object of Effects (2014) ICLQ (2014)
    • UK House of Parliament: House of Lords (2018) at 54 147 186 and 198 written evidence (2018) interviewed by BBC Radio 4
    • Intergovernmental organisation: OECD DAF/COMP (2020)1 31 Springer (2018)
    • reports commissioned for the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action 2016 CLR (2015) and 2022 Hart (2020)
    • digital markets strategy of the South Africa Competition Commission Hart (2020)
  • 2022: ICN NGA for EC DG COMP (2017-2022): Non-Governmental Advisor to the International Competition Network for the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition for the Cartel (2017/2018) and for the Unilateral Conduct Working Group (2018/2022) reporting on dominance in digital markets and on theories of harm and remedies.
  • 2012: Dr. Friedrich-Feldbausch-Stiftung Prize:

Publications

Chapter in book

  • Exclusionary and exploitative abuse of consumer data
    Chirita, A. D. (in press). Exclusionary and exploitative abuse of consumer data. In M. Ioannidou & D. Mantzari (Eds.), Research Handbook on Competition Law and Data Privacy. Edward Elgar.
  • Effective and Proportionate Merger Control of EU Merger Control
    Chirita, A. (in press). Effective and Proportionate Merger Control of EU Merger Control. In C. Rusu, J. van de Gronden, M. Veebrink, M. Maggiolino, & S. Oliveira Pais (Eds.), Elgar Encyclopaedia of Competition Law. Edward Elgar.
  • Data-Driven Mergers under EU Competition Law
    Chirita, A. D. (2020). Data-Driven Mergers under EU Competition Law. In O. Akseli & J. Linarelli (Eds.), The future of commercial law : ways forward for change and reform. (pp. 147-183). Hart Publishing. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781509914722.ch-007
  • The Disclosure of Evidence under the ‘Antitrust Damages’ Directive 2014/104/EU
    Chirita, A. D. (2017). The Disclosure of Evidence under the ‘Antitrust Damages’ Directive 2014/104/EU. In V. Tomljenović, N. Bodiroga-Vukobrat, V. Butorac Malnar, & I. Kunda (Eds.), EU competition and state aid rules : public and private enforcement. (pp. 147-173). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-47962-9_8

Conference Paper

Journal Article

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

Supervision students

Chris Sherwin

Lyuxing Tao

Xiaoran Sun