Ralf Michaels is an expert in comparative law and conflict of laws, and a professor at Duke University School of Law. His current research focuses mainly on three issues: the role of domestic courts in globalization, the role of conflict of laws as a theory of global legal fragmentation, and the status and relevance of law beyond the state.  He has authored numerous articles on all three topics.

Michaels has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Panthéon/Assas (Paris II), Princeton, Pennsylvania, Toronto, and the London School of Economics. He has also held senior research fellowships at Harvard and Princeton, as well as the American Academy in Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for Private Law in Hamburg. In 2015, he gave a number of lectures on private international law at The Hague Academy for International Law.

Michaels studied law at the Universities of Passau and Cambridge, UK.