Jo Shaw completed her undergraduate studies at
Trinity College, Cambridge where she studied Modern Languages in Part 1 of Tripos, followed by Law in Part 1B and Part 2. She was awarded a scholarship by the
Wiener-Anspach Foundation to study at the Institut des Etudes Europennes at the
Université Libre de Bruxelles, where she completed the Licence spéciale en droit européen. She also gained an LLD from the University of Edinburgh in 2008 and was awarded an Honorary LLD from
Helsinki University in 2023. Jo Shaw started her academic career at University College London and worked subsequently at the University of Exeter, Keele University and the University of Leeds. Before moving to Edinburgh she was Professor of European Law at the
University of Manchester. She was a Fulbright Visitor and Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School in 1998 and in 2017-2018 she was a EURIAS fellow at the Collegium for Advanced Studies at Helsinki University. Jo Shaw is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She is listed on the web site AcademiaNet, which profiles world-leading women academics. In 2015 the
Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, the
Princess Royal, conferred the Chancellor's Award for Research on Professor Shaw in recognition of her outstanding contributions to research. Since 2001, she has been a senior research fellow at
The Federal Trust. She is co-director of the GlobalCIT Observatory at the European University Institute. She was chair of the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (
UACES) between 2003 and 2006. In 2024 she was elected General Secretary of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh (2025-2029). ==Research==