Dr Joseph Lee is a Reader in Corporate and Financial law at the University of Manchester School of Law. He was a senior lecturer in corporate and commercial law at the University of Exeter UK and assistant professor of law at the University of Nottingham UK, which he joined immediately after the completion of his PhD at the University of London.

He is the founding programme director of the Manchester Online LLM in International Commercial and Technology Law.  He is the author of Crypto-Finance, Law and Regulation: Governing an Emerging Ecosystem (2021) and the editor of several influential books including Web3 Governance: Law and Policy (2025); A Research Agenda for Financial Law and Regulation (2025); and  Data Governance in AI, FinTech and LegalTech: Law and Regulation in the Financial Sector (2022).

He is the Research Director for Digital Technology, Crime and the Law at the Centre for Digital Trust and Society at the University of Manchester. Dr Lee leads cutting-edge research on the intersection of commercial law and emerging technologies. He has been the principal investigator of research projects funded by the UKRI, the British Academy and the British Council. He has held visiting positions at prestigious institutions including at Bocconi University, KU Leuven, Chinese University of Hong Kong, University of Liège, National Taiwan University and Tokyo University. He serves on the advisory board of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence AI-2-TRACE-CRIME, at Neapolis University Pafos. He is the convener of the Digital Technology, Crime and the Law Conference 2025. 

Dr Lee welcomes PhD applications in the field of Commercial Law and Technology. He is particularly interested in supervising projects in the following areas: Corporate and financial law, AI systems and governance in financial industry, DAO and blockchain governance, cybersecurity and corporate governance, digital assets law and regulation, crypto-assets markets regulation, platform governance, Web3 governance, and online dispute resolution (ODR).

He is also an attorney-at-law of New York State. He acts as a consultant on legal, regulatory and strategic issues related to DeFi, digital and crypto-assets, DAOs, Metaverse, Web3, emerging technologies including DLT and Quantum, exchange and trading platforms, legal-tech and online dispute resolutions platforms. Dr Lee acts as arbitrator in disputes relating to financial services, crypto-assets and fintech.