This year’s International Academy of Comparative Law’s Conference taking place in Asunción and will feature a series of sessions organised by UNIDROIT on its instruments in the fields of finance, agriculture and UPICC.
Programme of the UNIDROIT Sessions
Sign up for the conference here .
Francisco is a Chair Professor of Law at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. His main fields of expertise are focused on International transactions, cross-border insolvency, international litigation as well as cross-border company law. Francisco has represented the Spanish government as national expert in different international organizations, such as UNIDROIT, UNCITRAL, The Hague Conference or the Counsel of the European Union.
He is a member of the EU Commission’s Expert Groups on insolvency, company restructuring, assignment of claims and securities. He is also a member of the Expert Group appointed by the Justice Ministry to implement the EU Directive on restructuring frameworks and second chance in Spain.
Member of the International Insolvency Institute and INSOL Europe
He is consultant at Linklaters Madrid.
José Angelo Estrella Faria is a Brazilian lawyer and former career staff member of the United Nations, lately (until November 2024) as Principal Legal Officer with the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), where he supervised the work of UNCITRAL on digital economy, insolvency law and negotiable cargo documents. He also acted as secretary of the working group that prepared the UN Convention on the International Effects of Judicial Sales of Ships.
From 1 October 2008 to 31 July 2017, he was the Secretary-General of the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (Unidroitt). Instruments completed during the period include two revisions to the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts (2010 and 2016), the UNESCO-UNIDROIT Model Provisions on State Ownership of Undiscovered Cultural Objects (2011), the Space Protocol to the Cape Town Convention (2012), the Principles on the Operation of Close-out Netting Provisions (2013), and the UNIDROIT/FAO/IFAD Legal Guide on Contract Farming (2016).
Until his appointment to Unidroit, Mr. Faria had worked at the UNCITRAL secretariat in Vienna from 1996 to 2008 on various areas, including public-private partnerships, public procurement, electronic commerce, contract law and transport law. Before joining the UN Office of Legal Affairs, in 1992, he had worked as an attorney in Brazil, specialising in commercial and trade law.
He has published articles and books, and taught various courses on legal harmonisation, commercial law, cultural property law and international law at various universities and institutions, including the University of Vienna, the University of Graz, the Sigmund Freud Private University (Vienna), the Dalian Maritime University (China), the Hague Academy of International Law (Netherlands) and the Xiamen Academy of International Law (China).
Herbert Kronke, a national of Germany, served as Secretary-General of UNIDROIT from 1998-2008.
Herbert Kronke is Emeritus Professor of Law, former Director of the Institute of Comparative Law, Conflict of Laws, and International Business Law and former Dean of the Faculty of Law of Heidelberg University. Since 2012 he serves as Arbitrator and Chairman of Chamber III of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.
He received his legal education in Germany and the United Kingdom, earning his Dr iur (PhD) at the University of Munich and a Dr iur habil (post-doc degree) at the University of Trier.
Herbert Kronke has published widely on the law of contracts, trusts, commercial law, company law, financial markets law, private international law and arbitration. He has conducted research and taught as visiting professor in Brazil, Canada, China, Greece, Hungary, Italy and the United States of America and at the Hague Academy of International Law.
Herbert Kronke is a member of the Académie International de droit comparé, the Academia Europea, as well as a member of national and international learned societies.
He was awarded honorary doctorates by the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest and the International Hellenic University, Thessaloniki.
The President of the Federal Republic of Germany conferred the honour of the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit upon him, and he was awarded the Ordem do Rio Branco by the Government of the Federative Republic of Brazil.
Professor Marc-André Renold, Dr. iur., LL.M. (Yale), studied law and the humanities at the Universities of Geneva and Basel in Switzerland and at Yale University in the USA. Professor Renold is the co-holder of the UNESCO Chair on the international law of the protection of cultural heritage at the University of Geneva, which he established in 2012. He also founded its Art-Law Centre of which he was a Director until August 2023, when he was appointed honorary Professor of the University of Geneva.
Professor Renold lectures on topics connected to art and cultural heritage law in Switzerland and abroad. He has lately been teaching on a regular basis at the LUISS University in Rome.
Marc-André Renold is an Attorney-at-law, Member of the Geneva Bar, and practices mainly in the field of art and cultural heritage law. He has been involved in some of the prominent cultural heritage restitution cases involving claims by non-European States and by victims of persecution and their descendants.
He is the author or co-author of many publications in the field of international and comparative art and cultural heritage law.
Among his achievements with the UNESCO Chair, one can mention the data base ArThemis – reviewing more than 150 cases of dispute resolution in the cultural heritage sector (https://plone.unige.ch/art-adr). He is also the founder of the recently established International Platform for the Diplomacy of Cultural Heritage.
Vincent Negriis a lawyer and senior researcher at the Institute for Social Sciences of Politic (Institut des Sciences sociales du Politique – UMR 7220), ENS Paris-Saclay.
His work focuses on comparative and international law of culture and of cultural heritage as well as on international law anthropology. He teaches in master and in PhD courses, as invited professor.
He works (or worked) also as legal expert for international organizations including UNESCO, UNIDROIT, Council of Europ, ECOWAS, ICOM and ICCROM.
A graduate of the French ENA (Ecole Nationale d’Administration) and of the
Geneva Graduate Institute (HEI), Angelo DAN is a Beninese senior official and diplomat.
Minister Plenipotentiary, he was appointed Ambassador, Deputy Head of
Mission at the Embassy of Benin in Paris in July 2021, after having actively
participated, as Political Counsellor (2017-2021), in the bilateral negotiations on the restitution of cultural property between France and Benin. He dedicated a book to these negotiations, which was published in Paris in December 2024 under the title “La restitution de biens culturels entre la France et le Bénin. Journal d’un processus historique (2016-2022)”.
A specialist in multilateral diplomacy, he currently holds the position of
Ambassador, Deputy Permanent Representative and Chargé d’affaires a.i. of
the Republic of Benin to the United Nations and other International
Organizations in Geneva
Ana Filipa Vrdoljak is Professor of Law and the UNESCO Chair in International Law and Cultural Heritage. She is co-coordinator of the UNESCO-UNITWIN Network on Culture in Emergencies. She is the author of International Law, Museums and the Return of Cultural Objects (Cambridge University Press, 2006 and 2008, forthcoming 2e 2025) and editor of Oxford Handbook on International Cultural Heritage Law with Francesco Francioni (Oxford University Press 2020), The Cultural Dimension of Human Rights (Oxford University Press, 2013) and International Law for Common Goods: Normative Perspectives in Human Rights, Culture and Nature with Federico Lenzerini (Hart Publishing, 2014), and Oxford Commentary on the 1970 UNESCO and 1995 UNIDROIT Conventions with Andrzej Jakubowski and Alessandro Chechi (Oxford University Press, 2024).
Professor Vrdoljak is a General Editor, with Francesco Francioni, of the Oxford Commentaries on International Cultural Heritage Law (Oxford University Press) and book series entitled Cultural Heritage Law and Policy (Oxford University Press). She is acting Secretary of the International Cultural Property Society (U.S.) and Management Committee, International Journal of Cultural Property (Cambridge University Press). She has been Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow, Marie Curie Fellow and Jean Monnet Fellow, Law Department European University Institute, Florence, and visiting scholar at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge and Global Law School, New York University. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy (in Law) from the University of Sydney.
Vesselina Haralampieva is Head of Sustainable Finance Governance and Regulation and Senior Counsel at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London. In this role, she leads a team driving strategic climate change and sustainability policy initiatives and drives legal reforms in sustainable finance, ESG reporting, and energy transition.
Vesselina has extensive experience advising businesses across diverse sectors in emerging markets on managing climate-related risks and aligning with international sustainability standards, including those applicable to global supply chains. She also helps integrate sustainability into corporate governance and legal frameworks while supporting companies in developing credible transition plans aligned with the Paris Agreement.
In addition to her work with private sector clients, Vesselina has contributed to legal harmonisation efforts and supported governments in implementing legal reforms in the energy sector and other areas critical to the green transition, reinforcing the role of law in enabling sustainable development.
An Honorary Professor of Sustainable Finance at UCL Laws, Vesselina also serves on expert groups including the Law Society’s Climate Change Working Group, the NGFS Legal Group. She is qualified as a solicitor in England & Wales and a lawyer in Bulgaria, and holds law degrees from Harvard Law School and Sofia University.
Elif Dilek Yilmaz is an Associate Counsel in the Sustainable Finance Governance & Regulation Unit of the Legal Transition Team at European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Her work focuses on strengthening legal, regulatory, and governance frameworks that enable private-sector transition toward sustainability, with a particular emphasis on climate corporate governance, transition planning, sustainable finance taxonomies, and sector-level reforms. She contributes to both policy dialogue and investment-related activities in EBRD economies and is also involved in the development of analytical tools and guidance materials for boards, regulators and policymakers.
Before joining EBRD, Elif practiced as a lawyer in Türkiye in leading energy and infrastructure practices, advising on renewable energy project finance, project development, and cross-border transactions. She has extensive experience working with complex regulatory environments, public–private stakeholders, and international financial institutions.
Elif holds an MSc in Law and Finance from the University of Oxford, where she was awarded the Law Faculty Prize in Corporate Finance Law, as well as an MSc in Economics from the Middle East Technical University, where her research addressed the economic implications of distributed electricity generation. She also worked in a research project funded by the EU on the extraterritorial implications of the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive for Türkiye as Jean Monnet Scholar.
Belinda is a senior legal professional with more than 25 years’ experience in law, regulation, policy and negotiation relating to Banking, Trading and Finance across Global Markets, Energy and Sustainable Finance. Previous roles include MD, global head for commodities legal and sustainable financing at Citibank, global head of commodities legal Deutsche Bank AG and private practice Energy and Infrastructure at Hogan Lovells. Belinda now focuses on driving finance towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and mediated negotiation and dispute resolution. She acts as ● legal consultant ● senior advisor to IETA and ● mediator at Mediation1st UK.
Emilia Onyema is an independent arbitrator and a Professor of International Commercial Law at SOAS University of London where she teaches international commercial arbitration, international investment law and commercial law in a global context. She is qualified to practice law in Nigeria, as a Solicitor in England & Wales, and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. She convenes the SOAS Arbitration in Africa conference series and leads the SOAS Arbitration in Africa biennial survey research project; she co-authored the African Promise and is the Director of the SOAS Arbitration and Dispute Resolution Centre. Her research interests focus on the development of international arbitration in Africa and the engagement of Africans in international arbitration. She has experience as presiding, co and sole arbitrator, and acts as legal expert witness in international arbitration. She actively publishes and speaks on topics relevant to her research interests. Some of her publications include, International Commercial Arbitration and the Arbitrator’s Contract (Routledge, 2010); Rethinking the Role of African National Courts in Arbitration (Kluwer, 2018), “Reimagining the Framework for resolving Intra-African Commercial Disputes in the Context of the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement”, World Trade Review (2019); and “African Practitioners, International Arbitration, and Inclusivity” (ICCA Congress Series No 21, 2022). In 2024, she received the CPR Institute award for “Outstanding Contribution to Diversity in ADR”, and the African Arbitration Association award for Publication/Speech of the Year for her Roebuck Lecture which was also shortlisted for the GAR Best Lecture/Speech Award in 2025.
María Ignacia Vial Undurraga is Professor of Private International Law at Universidad de los Andes and at the Pontificia Universidad Católica, both of Santiago, Chile. She holds a DPhil (Doctor of Philosophy) degree from King´s College, London. She is a qualified lawyer before the Chilean Supreme Court and a Bachelor of Laws from the Pontificia Universidad Católica, Santiago, Chile. She is also a founder member of ADIPRI, the Chilean Association of Private International Law and co-drafter of the 2020, Bill of the Chilean Act on Private International Law. Likewise, she is an associated member of IHLADI, the Hispano-Portuguese American Institute of International Law. She has been a visiting researcher at the UNIDROIT Institute (Rome) and at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law (Hamburg). She is a member of UNIDROIT´s Governing Council for the 2024-2028 period and Chair of its Working Group on Collaborative Legal Structures for Agricultural Enterprises. Her area of research is focused on Private International Law and, specifically, the law applicable to international contracts, to international precontractual liability, to international matrimonial regimes and to international corporations; besides, she has developed research on sustainability duties in contracts and corporations. She has published several papers in Chilean and foreign legal journals and delivered presentations in national and international academic conferences and seminars.
Camila Villard Duran is an Associate Professor of Law at the ESSCA School of Management in France and a Brazilian lawyer. Her research examines international economic law, the regulation of money and financial systems, digital-asset governance, climate-finance frameworks, and gender equity in economic and legal institutions. She is one of the co-founders of the Institute of Women in Regulation in Brazil, a platform for collaboration and exchange of ideas and experiences among female professionals in regulatory fields.
In 2021, she was awarded her habilitation in International Economics at the Institute of International Relations of the University of São Paulo (USP). She holds a joint Ph.D. in international economic law from the USP (Brazil) and the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (France), a Master of Laws and a Bachelor of Laws degrees from the USP. From 2013 to 2022, she was a law professor at the USP in Brazil. Camila is a former fellow of the Nantes Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) and the Oxford – Princeton Global Leaders Fellow, a research program on global economic governance run by the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (USA) and the University College, University of Oxford. She was a visiting researcher at the ISJPS (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne/CNRS) and a visiting professor at the Sciences Po Paris, the Université Lumière Lyon 2, and the Center for Commercial Law Studies of the Queen Mary University of London.
Jeannette M.E. Tramhel is an international lawyer who is currently Chair of the Sustainable Development Committee for the Centenary of UNIDROIT. She has worked with the legal secretariat of three international organizations, most recently as Senior Legal Consultant with UNIDROIT, prior thereto as Senior Legal Officer with the Organization of American States (OAS), and previously with the United Nations Commission for International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). As a result, she has developed an enriched understanding of the development of private international law, commercial and trade law, which she has applied in the management of technical assistance projects carried out in partnership with States embarking upon legislative implementation and domestic law reform to improve access to credit and simplify business incorporation. She holds an LL.M. from Georgetown University, an LL.B. from Queen’s University in Canada and is a member of the bar in New York and Ontario, Canada. Jeannette has also worked with the Government of Canada, practiced law with a major Canadian firm and taught various courses in international trade and business law.
Jeannette also holds a Master of Environmental Design and a Bachelor of Agricultural Science. She has worked as an international development professional on a range of issues in partnership with communities in Southeast Asia, Africa, Central America and the Caribbean to orchestrate projects that emphasize a community-based, participatory process. With her combined experience in law, agriculture and environmental design, Jeannette brings an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the use of law as an effective instrument for sustainable development.
Lisa DeMarco is a Senior Partner and CEO of Resilient. She is called to the bar in Canada and England and repeatedly recognized as a global expert in climate and energy law with three decades of experience in the sectors. She assists financial institutions, energy companies, innovators, governments, non-governmental organizations, and Indigenous business organizations on domestic and overseas renewable power and energy transition projects, sustainable and climate finance transactions, carbon dioxide removals and carbon capture use and storage, projects and transactions, climate and nature related financial disclosure, corporate climate risk, environmental and social governance (ESG), green bonds, claims, the Paris Agreement, carbon trading (domestic, international, voluntary, and compliance), climate-related compliance and litigation, and sustainable business
strategy. She also represents several governments and leading energy companies in a wide variety of international dispute resolution proceedings, and energy regulatory proceedings.
Lisa is a director of the boards at the Toronto Hydro Corporation, the International Emissions Trading
Association, and the MaRS Cleantech Innovation Board and a member of the Climate Economy
Strategic Council. She regularly attends the United Nations climate negotiations.
Ulrich G. Schroeter is a Professor of Law at the University of Basel (Switzerland). He has published extensively on matters of international trade law and commercial law (in particular the 1980 Vienna Sales Convention (CISG)), Swiss and German contract law, arbitration, treaty law and financial markets regulation. Professor Schroeter is the co-editor of the Commentary on the UN Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CISG) (Oxford University Press, 5th edition 2022, 2,160 pages) and the editor-in-chief of the CISG-online database (www.cisg-online.org). His current research inter alia focusses on the impact of supply chain regulations and of economic sanctions on cross-border trading relations, as well as on the challenges of international commercial law in times of climate change.
Professor Schroeter’s works have been cited by courts in Australia, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Switzerland and the US as well as by Advocates General at the European Court of Justice. He serves as the national correspondent for Switzerland to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) for the CISG and is a member of the CISG Advisory Council. Professor Schroeter regularly advises on matters of international trade law, acts as legal expert and sits as arbitrator.
Born in 1952 in Germany.High school in Germany and in the United States. Studies in law and French language in Saarbrücken and Geneva; qualification as a German judge in 1981. Post graduate studies in development issues and development law in Geneva and Paris. Licentiate, doctorate and professorship qualification incomparative law at the University of Helsinki.
Lorenzo Cotula is the Head of the Law, Economies and Justice Programme at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a policy research institute based in the United Kingdom. Lorenzo’s research and policy work cuts across international economic law, natural resource law, environmental law, human rights law and sustainable development. Alongside his role at IIED, Lorenzo was a Visiting Professor at Strathclyde Law School in 2017-2023 and, prior to that, he held visiting affiliations with Warwick and Dundee universities. Before joining IIED in 2002, Lorenzo worked as a research consultant to the Legal Office of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Lorenzo holds a degree in law (Sapienza University of Rome), an MSc in Development Studies (London School of Economics), a PhD in law (University of Edinburgh) and a PgCert in Sustainable Business (University of Cambridge).
Prof. Leonardo Fabio Pastorino is Full Professor of Agricultural and Food Law at the University of Verona (since 2021), where he teaches Agri-Food Law; Agri-Environmental Innovation and Sustainability Law; Agricultural Law for Development and Innovation; and Comparative Agri-Food Law. He previously served as Full Professor of Agricultural Law at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Faculty of Legal and Social Sciences, full-time), where he began his academic career in 1993 and progressed through academic ranks from assistant to associate professor to full professor. He was also Full Professor of Renewable Natural Resources Law at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Faculty of Natural and Museum Sciences).
His research addresses the intersections of agricultural law, environmental law, and natural resources law. Since 2010, he has led research groups at the Universidad de La Plata on sustainable development, water law, and related legal developments. In 2017, he received the Universidad Nacional de La Plata Scientific Research Award.
Prof. Pastorino has organized eight national congresses on provincial agrarian law across different regions of Argentina and edited the conference papers, which are published online through the University of La Plata’s Institutional Repository. He is the author of Ecología, ambiente y derecho. Un enfoque interdisciplinario; La política europea de desarrollo rural sostenible: Obstáculo o modelo para el Mercosur?; Daño al ambiente; and Derecho agrario argentino. He has also compiled numerous volumes and authored more than 100 scientific articles.
He is also the President of the World Union of Agricultural Law.
Dr. Marek Dubovec is the Director of Law Reform Programs at the International Law Institute (ILI). For over 15 years, Marek has been working with UNCITRAL and UNIDROIT to draft conventions, model laws, principles, and guides that assist States in modernizing their commercial law frameworks. He has worked on implementing these standards under projects funded by the World Bank Group, the EBRD, FSD-Kenya, and others. He has assisted countries in Africa (e.g., Kenya), Asia (e.g., the Philippines), Eastern Europe (e.g., Ukraine), the Middle East (e.g., the UAE), and Latin America (e.g., Colombia) with reforms of their frameworks on secured transactions, factoring, warehouse receipts, and related legislation. Marek has authored and co-authored numerous articles and books, including the 2019 Secured Transactions Law Reform in Africa, as well as policy reports, including the 2025 Knowledge Guide on Crop Receipts Finance. Marek is an elected member of the American Law Institute.
Prof. Dr. Cecilia Fresnedo de Aguirre is former professor of Private International Law at the University of the Republic Law School, at the Catholic University of Uruguay Law School, at the Hague Academy of International Law and visiting professor at several universities in different countries. Director of the Post-graduate Centre of the Law School of the University of the Republic. Member and former Director of the Uruguayan Institute of Private International Law, member of the American Private International Law Association (ASADIP), member of the Consultative Board of Private Higher Education appointed by the Ministry of Education and Culture (2002), former and re-elected member of the Inter-American Juridical Committee of the OAS, member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, Associate Member of the Hispanic Portuguese American Filipino Institute of International Law (IHLADI), Associate Member of the Institut de Droit International, member of the Working Group in charge of elaborating a Draft Act on Private International Law (Act Nº 19.920, November 17, 2020), Attorney (1974), Doctor of Law and Social Sciences (1978), University of the Republic, School of Law. Lecturer and/or panellist in more than 120 seminars, conferences, congresses and workshops, including the Congress to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the founding of UNIDROIT. Author of 26 books and more than 150 articles and chapters in Law Reviews -including the Unif. L. Rev- Rev. dr. unif. – and collective publications in Uruguay and abroad. Global professional experience as consultant and arbitrator.
Etsuko Sugiyama is a Professor of Law at Faculty of Law, Graduate School of Law and School of Law at Hitotsubashi University in Japan.
Prof. Sugiyama specializes in civil procedural laws, civil execution laws, insolvency laws and alternative dispute resolutions(ADR). She started her academic career at the Graduate School of Law and Politics of the University of Tokyo as a research associate after obtaining a Bachelor of Law degree there. She also obtained a Master of Law degree at Yale Law School as a Fullbright scholar. She passed the bar exams both in Japan and New York State and is qualified as an attorney in New York State. She did research as a Visiting Scholar at Columbia Law School and the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge. Her current academic interests are in the introduction of Information Technologies (IT) and handling of digital assets in those civil proceedings.
Prof. Sugiyama is currently the director of Japan Association of the Law of Civil Procedure and Japan Association of the Law of Mediation and Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). She has been a member of various legislative councils for civil procedural laws and family law at the Ministry of Justice, and a member of the committee for telecommunications dispute resolution at the Ministry of International Affairs and Communications. She also represents the Government of Japan at Working Group V (Insolvency) of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL).
John Sorabji is an Associate Professor of Law at University College London. His expertise is in civil procedural law and alternative dispute resolution, and he is particularly interested in access to and the delivery of effective civil justice. He is co-founder and co-director of UCL Laws’ Centre for Dispute Resolution. Outside academia, he was previously Deputy Private Secretary to HM King Charles III and before that Principal Legal Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales and the Master of the Rolls, where he advised on constitutional issues and judicial governance.
John is a member of the Civil Justice Council of England and Wales. He has been a member of its Pre-Action Protocols Working Party and is a member of its standing committees on Data and Futures. He co-chaired the Working Party on Litigation Funding and was responsible for devising its recommendations and drafting its Interim and Final Reports. He is also a member of its AI Working Group and co-chair of the Civil Cases in the Magistrates’ Courts Working Party.
He has been a Visiting Professor at Université Panthéon-Assas and the University of Freiburg. He is a former member of the European Law Institute’s Executive Committee and Governing Council, and one of its founders. He has acted as an expert for the Venice Commission and has been appointed as an expert for the Council of Europe’s Consultative Council of European Judges, preparing Opinion No. 26 on the use of assistive technology by the judiciary. He has also provided advice to organisations including the Law Society of Nigeria and given expert evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on Standards.
He is the author of English Civil Justice after Woolf and Jackson (2014) and A Model Code of Civil Procedure for England and Wales (2024). He is also General Editor of Civil Procedure (The White Book).
Alexis Mourre, founding partner of Mourre Chessa Le Lay Arbitration – MCL Arbitration, has served as counsel, President of the Tribunal, Co-Arbitrator, Sole Arbitrator or Expert in more than 350 international arbitrations, both ad hoc and before most international arbitral
institutions (ICC, ICSID, LCIA, ICDR, SIAC, SCC, DIAC, VIAC, etc.).
He established his own arbitration practice in May 2015, after having founded Castaldi Mourre & Partners in 1996. Alexis has been a Court member of the ICC International Court of Arbitration for 12 years, first as Vice-President (2009-2015) and then as President (1 July 2015-30 June 2021). He was Vice President of the ICC Institute of World Business Law (2011-2015), co-chair of the IBA Arbitration Committee (2012-2013), LCIA Court member (2012-2015) and Council member of the Milan International Chamber of Arbitration (2006-2014).
He is the author of numerous books and publications in the field of International Business Law, Private International Law and Arbitration Law. He is founder and former editor in chief of Les Cahiers de l’Arbitrage – The Paris Journal of International Arbitration, a leading publication in the field of international arbitration.
Alexis is a member of a large number of scientific and professional institutions dedicated to Arbitration and Private International Law. He is the founder and former president of Paris Place d’Arbitrage/Paris the Home of International Arbitration. He is fluent in French, English, Italian and Spanish, and has a working knowledge of Portuguese.
Diane P. Wood is the Director of The American Law Institute and a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School, where she teaches in the areas of federal civil procedure, antitrust law, and international trade and business. Previously she served on the U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, serving as Chief Judge from 2013 to 2020.
Prior to her appointment, she was the Harold J. and Marion F. Green Professor of International Legal Studies at the University of Chicago Law School, the first woman to hold a named chair at the school. She also served for two years as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, with responsibility for the Division’s international, appellate, and legal policy matters.
Wood was elected to the ALI in 1990 and was elected to the Council in 2003. In 2023, she became Director of ALI. After law school, she clerked for Judge Irving L. Goldberg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and for Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Dora Neo is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore and the founding Director of the Faculty’s Centre for Banking & Finance Law which she led for some ten years from 2013. She served as an expert in the Working Group on the UNCITRAL-UNIDROIT Model Law on Warehouse Receipts and its Guide to Enactment, is an Advisory Committee Member of the UNIDROIT Asian Transnational Law Centre and a UNIDROIT correspondent for Singapore. Her research interests include global developments in secured transactions law; modernisation of trade finance law; consumer protection in the finance industry and contract law. Her publications include Studies in the Contract Laws of Asia V: Ending and Changing Contracts (co-edited with M Chen-Wishart and S Vogenauer, Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2016); Secured Transactions Law in Asia: Principles, Perspectives and Reform (co-edited with L Gullifer, Hart Publishing, 2021); and Trade Finance: Technology, Innovation and Documentary Credits (co-edited with C Hare, Oxford University Press, 2021). From September to December 2025, she was an Academic Visitor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Cambridge, and concurrently, a Visiting Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge. She is a graduate of Oxford University and Harvard Law School and is a non-practicing member of the Bar in England and Wales (Gray’s Inn) and Singapore.
Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell is the full Professor of Commercial Law at University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain.
President of the European Law Institute (ELI).
Director of the Research Chair on AI Foundations and Frontiers.
She was Sir Roy Goode Scholar at Unidroit in 2021–22 and she has been elected member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
She was a member of the Working Group on the MAC Protocol to the Cape Town Convention, Delegate of Spain in the Diplomatic Conference in South Africa. She is the Chair of the Supervisory Auhtority (Rail Protocol, OTIF Secretariat). She is a Delegate of the Kingdom of Spain at United Nations (for UNCITRAL) in Working Group VI on secured transactions, and WG IV on e-commerce, and an Expert for UNCITRAL and Unidroit on digital economy projects.
She is also member of the European Commission Expert Group on Liability and New Technologies, the EU Expert Group for the Observatory on Online Platform Economy, and the EU Expert Group on B2B Data Sharing and Cloud Computing. She is an arbitrator at the Spanish/Madrid Court of Arbitration.
She is member of the European Law Institute (ELI) Executive Committee and Council and author of the ELI Guiding Principles on ADM. She was awarded a European Central Bank scholarship under the ECB Legal Program on Fintech Regulatory Challenges. Her past academic appointments include, inter alia, the James J Coleman Sr Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Tulane Law School, Academic Visitor at the University of Cambridge, Visiting Professor at the University of Sydney, Associate Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore, Marie Curie Fellow at Centre of European Law and Politics (Germany), and Chair of Excellence at Oxford University.
Dr Iyare Otabor-Olubor is a Senior Lecturer in Commercial Law at Aston University, Birmingham, UK. He is an expert in transnational commercial law, with a particular focus on the reform and modernisation of secured transactions law. His research engages deeply with questions of access to finance in emerging economies, fintech regulation, and he is interested in critical legal research methodologies, including doctrinal and empirical legal approaches. Iyare teaches commercial law and contributes to curriculum development within the law school. He is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE, reflecting his sustained commitment to excellence in teaching and learning. Iyare holds an LLB degree, an LLM in Commercial Law, and a PhD, and he has been called to the Nigerian Bar. He actively supervises doctoral researchers and serves on, and chairs, several committees within his university. He also collaborates with scholars and intergovernmental organisations on projects related to legal development and access to finance.
Professor Garro is Honorary Professor of Law at the University of Buenos Aires and teaches at Columbia University School of Law, where he is Senior Research Scholar at the Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law.
He has authored books and several publications on international commercial arbitration, sale of goods, and secured transactions.
Prof. Garro was awarded the degree of “abogado” from the National University of La Plata (1975) and received a master’s degree by LSU´s Paul M. Hebert Law Center (1979). He moved to New York to pursue further graduate studies and was awarded a doctoral degree in law (JSD) by Columbia University (1990), where he currently teaches in the fields of comparative law (with an emphasis on Latin American legal systems), international business transactions and dispute resolution. He has been admitted to practice in Buenos Aires, Madrid, and New York and occasionally serves as an independent arbitrator and party-appointed expert on foreign law.
Professor Louise Gullifer KC (hon) FBA is Rouse Ball Professor of English Law at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. She is currently Chair of the Cambridge Law Faculty. She was formerly Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Oxford and held a Fellowship at Harris Manchester College in 2000. She practised at the Bar for a number of years before becoming an academic, and is a Bencher of Gray’s Inn.
She teaches and writes extensively in all areas of commercial and financial law, especially secured transactions and financial collateral, intermediated securities, set-off and personal property. She was the UK delegate to both UNCITRAL (working group VI) during its work on secured transactions, and is a member of several UNIDROIT working groups, including chairing the drafting groups of the projects on the private law of digital assets and verified carbon credits.
She has been the Kwa Geok Choo Distinguished Visiting Professor at National University of Singapore and held a Chair of Excellence at Universidad Carlos III, Madrid. She has also been a visiting professor in Paris, Leiden, Radboud University, Hong Kong City University and Columbia Law School.
Rafael Castillo-Triana is a lawyer and consultant for the leasing industry with more than 40 years of experience in leasing. Experience in litigation, insurance, stock exchange, international banking and management of investment portfolios before 1982, from that year he dedicated his professional efforts to the leasing industry, first as turn-around manager of Leasing Grancolombiana S.A. (today Leasing Bancolombia), and founder and manager of the companies Megaleasing S.A. and Equileasing S.A. between 1987 and 1990. In 1988 he represented the Republic of Colombia in the negotiation, drafting and adoption of the UNIDROIT Convention on International Leasing of Ottawa, Canada, the basis of the laws of countries such as Panama and El Salvador (whose draft law he prepared). In 1990 he opened his legal practice specializing in leasing and in 1997 he was appointed director for Latin America of the global leasing consultancy, The Alta Group.
He has published four books on leasing and related subjects: “Leasing Financial Mechanism of the Future” (Editorial Hojas e Ideas, 1994), “Legal Aspects of Equipment Leasing in Latin America” (Editorial Wolters-Kluwer, The Hague, 2000), “The Unidroit Model Leasing Law: A Reliable History of the Source of Leasing Regulation”, Amazon 2019, and the most recent “Probability of Default”. published in May 2022, the Spanish version of which can be found in this link. , which is accompanied by a series of webinars that explain the history and concepts behind the probability of default on loans and leases. .
Consultant to the World Bank to develop the legal framework of countries such as Madagascar, Tanzania, Cameroon, Rwanda, Kenya, Jordan, Yemen, Palestine, the Republic of Georgia and the Kingdom of Lesotho, Morocco, Guatemala and Ethiopia, author of most of the Central Bank laws and regulations governing leasing in these countries.
Chairman of the Middle East Leasing Conferences in Dubai since 2014.
With The Alta Group, he leads a team of Latin American professionals in charge of enriching Latin American leasing companies with business intelligence and experiences acquired by The Alta Group worldwide.
Lauro Gama Jr. graduated from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) in 1987 and was admitted in 1988 to the Brazilian Bar. He holds a Masters in International Relations (PUC-Rio, 1992), a LL.M degree in Comparative Law (McGill, 1999), and a Doctorate degree in International Law (Univ. São Paulo, 2004). He is currently Adjunct Professor at the Pontifical Catholic Univ. of Rio (PUC-Rio), where he teaches Private International Law, Contracts and International Commercial Arbitration. He has authored books and articles published in specialized journals. He participated in the working group of the UNIDROIT Principles (2008-2010) and also in the working group of the 2015 Hague Principles. Prof. Gama is member of the CISG Advisory Council. In 2016, Lauro lectured at the Hague Academy of International Law (“The UNIDROIT Principles as the law applicable to commercial contracts”, published in vol. 406 of the Collected Courses). To this date Lauro has acted as counsel and arbitrator in more than 150 cases, under the rules of ICC, LCIA, UNCITRAL and Brazilian arbitral institutions. Mr. Gama served as President of the Brazilian Arbitration Committee (CBAr) from 2013 to 2015, and as a Member of the ICC Court of International Arbitration from 2015 to 2021. He served as member of the Council of the ICC Institute of World Business Law (2019-2015) and currently served as emeritus member. He currently participates of the working group formed by UNIDROIT and the ICC WBL Institute to develop a legal framework for international investment contracts.
Prof. Andrés Jana is a founding partner of Jana & Gil, Dispute Resolution. He serves as Vice President of the International Court of Arbitration at the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), Chair of Working Group II on Dispute Settlement at the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), Member of the Governing Board and Chair of the Judiciary Committee of the International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA), and founding member and part of the governing board of the Latin American Arbitration Association (ALARB).
He acts as counsel and arbitrator in commercial and investment treaty arbitrations. His experience includes disputes under the auspices of ICSID, SIAC, HKIAC, ICC, PCA, LCIA, ICDR, SCC and others, as well as proceedings before courts in various jurisdictions. He also acted as counsel before the International Court of Justice. His current work includes disputes across a wide range of sectors, including oil and gas, construction, mining and telecommunications. In addition, he has served as legal advisor to Chile in the negotiations of the investment and financial services chapters of a number of Free Trade Agreements.
He is a professor of private law at the Universidad de Chile since 1997, where he teaches contract law, torts and the law of obligations.
Hiroo Sono, LL.M., University of Michigan Law School, is Professor of Law at Hokkaido University Law School, Japan. His main fields of research interest are contract law, international commercial law, and harmonization of private law. He has published extensively in Japanese and English in these fields.
He has been involved in UNIDROIT’s work as a member of the UNIDROIT Working Group for the Model Law on Warehouse Receipts (2020-2024) and as one of the Japanese Correspondents to UNIDROIT since 2015. He also contributed as an expert to the drafting of the ‘HCCH/UNIDROIT/UNCITRAL Legal Guide to Uniform Legal Instruments in the Area of International Commercial Contracts (with a Focus on Sales)’ (2020). Additionally, he is one of the translators into Japanese of the 1994, 2010, and 2016 editions of the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts and the UNIDROIT Principles on Digital Assets and Private Law.
Relatedly, he has been a founding member of the CISG Advisory Council (CISG-AC) since 2001 and of the Global Private Law Forum (GPLF) of Japan since 2014. From 2006 to 2008, he served as Counsellor at the Civil Affairs Bureau, Ministry of Justice, where he was responsible for Japan’s accession to the CISG. He also served as the Japanese delegate to UNCITRAL Working Group VI (Security Interests) (2008-2018) and UNCITRAL Working Group I (Warehouse Receipts) (2023-2024).
Christian Twigg-Flesner LL.B. PCHE Ph.D. (Sheffield) is Professor of Contract and Consumer Law at the University of Warwick. He is also serving as Managing Editor of the Journal of Consumer Policy. Before he joined Warwick, he worked at the University of Hull, latterly as Professor of Commercial Law. He previously worked at the University of Sheffield (2002-4) and Nottingham Trent University (1999-2002). He is a Fellow of the European Law Institute and served as co-reporter/person-with-file for the ELI Guiding Principles and Model Rules on Digital Assistants for Consumer Contracts (2025). His research and teaching interests cover Contract, Consumer and Commercial Law. He has a keen interest in the impact of digitalisation on these fields. He has written many articles, book chapters and books, including Foundations of International Commercial Law (Routledge, 2021). He has been involved in many projects throughout his career, including work in the Research Group on Existing EC Private Law (Acquis Group) and the EC Consumer Compendium project (2005), and has co-authored several reports that formed the basis of UK consumer law reform. Currently, his work frequently focuses on the relationship between law and digital technologies, both in respect of Consumer Law and International Commercial Law.
Yesim M. Atamer holds the Chair for Private Law, Commercial Law, European and Comparative Law at University of Zurich, Faculty of Law. Her main areas of research are law of obligations, especially comparative contract law, harmonization of European contract law, law of domestic and international sale of goods, and regulation and contract law. As a scholar of the European Union Jean Monnet program, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Max Planck Society, Swiss Institute of Comparative Law and the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (Unidroit) she has conducted research in Lausanne, Basel, Rome, Munich, Hamburg and Cambridge (USA). In 2007, she received the Distinguished Young Scientist Award from the Turkish Academy of Sciences, and in 2019, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Hamburg. She is elected titular member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, the International Academy of Commercial and Consumer Law, the Science Academy, Turkey, and the Academia Europaea. Atamer became elected member of the CISG Advisory Council in 2013. She is a contributor to the major commentary on the Unidroit Principles of International Commercial Contracts edited by Vogenauer (2nd edition Oxford University Press, 2015), the CISG commentary edited by Kröll, Mistelis and Perales Viscasillas (2nd edition, Hart Publishing, 2018) and the CISG commentary edited by Schlechtriem/Schwenzer/Schroeter (8th edition Beck/Nomos/ Hart Publishing, 2024). She has been active in legal practice as arbitrator and legal expert in national and international disputes.
Giuditta Cordero-Moss, Dr. juris (Oslo), PhD (Moscow), Professor, Oslo University.
Professor Pilar Perales Viscasillas is a Full Professor of Commercial Law at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, currently on leave. She also earned her PhD at the same institution, where she served as Director of the Doctoral School and of the School of Law. She holds a Law degree from the Autonomous University of Madrid. Since 2018, she has been an independent board member of Mapfre S.A., and she also holds positions at Mapfre Global Risks and Mapfre Asistencia, where she serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors. She is a member of the Audit Committee and the Risk and Sustainability Committee.
She stands out for her extensive experience as a national and international arbitrator, having participated in nearly 50 arbitrations, many of them as sole arbitrator or chair of the tribunal, in both ad hoc and institutional proceedings.
She is the author of seven monographs and more than 200 publications on international commercial contracting, uniform commercial law, company law, insurance law, and arbitration. She has received numerous awards for her scholarly work. She has been a Visiting Scholar and professor at universities in the United States, Portugal, and Spain.
She has played a significant role in international organizations: she served as Spain’s delegate to UNCITRAL for more than 15 years, was a correspondent for the CLOUT system, and acted as an observer in the working groups for the UNIDROIT Principles. She is currently the Director of Moot Madrid, chairs the CISG Advisory Council, and participates in the governing bodies of various arbitration institutions in Spain, Mexico, and Peru. She is also a member of the governing board of SEAIDA and of the UC3M Climate Strategic Initiative.
Risham Garg is a Professor of Law (2020) at the National Law University Delhi, India. He also serves as the Executive Director of the Center for Transnational Commercial Law (CTCL) and also of the Centre for Incubation, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE). He is also a Director of NLU Delhi Foundation, the not-for-profit co. and incubation centre promoted by NLUD.
Risham holds a Doctor of Laws (LL.D.), doctoral research degree, for his work on International Commercial Laws and Arbitration. He is continuing with the National Law University Delhi as a regular faculty member since 2009. He has previously worked as a Lecturer at the Amity Law School, (IP University Delhi) for over six years during 2002-2009.
TAUGHT COURSES | AREA OF INTEREST
Seminar on Transnational Dispute Resolution and Emerging Technologies, Corporate Insolvency and Bankruptcy Laws in LLM. PhD course work: Research Experiences, Aspects of Legal Writing. Business Laws, Technology and Entrepreneurship Clinic.
Recent consultancy and research work:
Visiting Research Scholar during June 2025, IPR Heidelberg University.
‘Insolvencies of Crypto Exchanges: Legal Issues’, with Nottingham University, UK- as Research Collaborator from India (August 2024).
Member, UNIDROIT Centenary Workstream on Financial Markets and Technology.
Member, UNIDROIT and ICC Consultative Committee on International Investment Law.
Award and honours
Received the NLUD UTKARSH Award for excellence in teaching and research, in 2023.
Matthias Lehmann is a professor of Private, Private International and Comparative Law at the University of Vienna. His main interest is the cross-border aspect of banking and financial law, both from a regulatory and from a private law viewpoint. He is regularly a guest professor in various universities, including Sorbonne University, where he teaches a class on the crypto economy. He has been visiting academic at the London School of Economics and Political Science, at Oxford University and at Stanford University, and is regularly invited as a guest professor at various European Universities, including Sorbonne University (France), where he teaches a class on the law and regulation of crypto markets. Matthias is a member of the Council European Law Institute, the American Law Institute, the Academia Europaea and of the Academic Council of the European Banking Institute. He was a member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on Conflict of Laws Regarding Securities and Claims, and has worked with the UK Financial Markets Law Committee. He has been an observer to the UNIDROIT working group, digital assets and private law. Currently, he is a member of the UNIDROIT Working Groups on bank insolvency and verified carbon credits.
Charles W. Mooney, Jr. Charles A. Heimbold, Jr. Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School; J.D. (cum laude) Harvard Law School; B.A. (High Honors) University of Oklahoma; Partner Shearman & Sterling (1981-86). He is a leading legal scholar in the fields of commercial law and bankruptcy law. His book (with the late Steven Harris), Security Interests in Personal Property, is a widely adopted text used in law schools around the United States. Mooney was honored for his contributions to the uniform law process by the Oklahoma City University School of Law. The American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers awarded Mooney the Distinguished Service Award, the Grant Gilmore Award in recognition of superior writing in the field of commercial finance law, and the Harry C. Sigman Special Award for leadership on the 2022 UCC Amendments. Mooney also served as a Co-Reporter for the Drafting Committee for the Revision of UCC Article 9 (Secured Transactions) (1990-2000), as Reporter for the Revision of the UCC (Emerging Technologies, including new Article 12) (2021-22), as the ABA Liaison-Advisor to the Permanent Editorial Board for the UCC, and as a member of Council and Chair of the Committee on UCC of the ABA Business Law Section. He is a Fellow and former Director of the American College of Bankruptcy and American College of Commercial Finance Attorneys, and a member and former director, vice-president, and member of the Executive Committee of the International Insolvency Institute (III). Mooney served as a member of UNIDROIT Working Group on Digital Assets, head of III delegation to UNCITRAL Working Group VI (secured transactions), and as a U.S. Delegate at the Diplomatic Conferences for the UNIDROIT Leasing Convention, Cape Town Convention (Aircraft and MAC Protocols), and Geneva Securities Convention.
Professor Dr. Matthias Haentjens holds the chair for civil law at Leiden University, the Netherlands. He also practices law as advocaat at De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek. He has been a deputy judge in the commercial law division of the Court of Amsterdam from 2019-2025.
He teaches and writes extensively in all areas of commercial and financial law. He has authored articles, books and authoritative case notes on commercial law, banking law, and insolvency law. He is elected fellow of several international associations, including the International Insolvency Institute, the European Law Institute, and the European Banking Institute.
Professor Haentjens was a member of the Expert Group on Securities and Claims at the European Commission, a member of the drafting group for the UNIDROIT project on Digital Assets and Private and is a member of the UNIDROIT working group on Bank Insolvency Law. He regularly advises national governments and international organisations on matters of financial and commercial law.
Ms. Elsie Addo Awadzi is a Visiting Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. She is a multi-disciplinary professional with 30 years of professional experience working in various capacities in Africa and internationally. Her experience spans economic governance, international financial institutions, financial services regulation, and crisis management. Until recently, she served as a Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana for seven years, where she led major reforms that helped to strengthen the banking system, including navigating it through a systemic banking crisis and a public debt restructuring exercise. Before then, she was Senior Counsel, Financial and Fiscal Law at the IMF, where she worked for six years helping several IMF member countries design and implement effective banking regulatory and crisis management frameworks, and fiscal governance frameworks. Before her IMF role, she held various portfolios in Ghana, including as a Commissioner of Ghana’s Securities & Exchange Commission for six years, where she played a key role in designing policies, rules, surveillance, and enforcement mechanisms for Ghana’s then-nascent capital market. She also consulted extensively for local and foreign businesses, private equity/venture capital funds, public sector clients, and development partners. Her earlier career saw her working in corporate law and a brief stint in bank treasury operations. She holds academic qualifications from Georgetown University Law Center (LL.M with Distinction in International Business & Economic Law 2012); University of Ghana Business School (M.B.A. Finance 2000), the Ghana School of Law (Qualifying Certificate in Law 1995), and the University of Ghana Law Faculty (LL.B 1993).
Dr Ole Böger is a Judge in Banking and Criminal matters at the Hanseatic Court of Appeal (Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht) in Bremen, Germany, and a Lecturer at the University of Bremen. Since 2022, he is a Correspondent of UNIDROIT for Germany. Previously, he has been, amongst others, a Desk Officer at the German Federal Ministry of Justice and for Consumer Protection (2013-2016), a Legal Officer at UNIDROIT working on the Principles of Close-Out Netting (2012-2013) and a research assistant at the Max-Planck-Institute for Foreign and Comparative Private Law in Hamburg, Germany (2003-2008). He has represented the German government in UNCITRAL Working Groups and at UNIDROIT, specifically in the preparation and adoption of the MAC Protocol to the Cape Town Convention, and he is an Ex officio Observer to the Preparatory Commission for the Establishment of the International Registry for MAC equipment, as well as a member of the Commission of Experts to the Supervisory Authority of the Luxembourg Rail Protocol. Recently, he has been an external consultant to secured transactions law reform projects of the World Bank in Suriname (2016), Greece (2020) and Lebanon (2021). Dr Böger holds law degrees of the University of Göttingen in Germany and King’s College London (UK) and he has authored numerous publications with a focus on international secured transactions law and the law of payment services.
Megumi Hara is Professor of Law at Chuo University, Tokyo, where she teaches property law, contract law, secured transactions, and trust law. Her research focuses on asset-based finance and the conceptual structure of property rights. Before joining Chuo, she taught at Kyushu University and Gakushuin University and has also given courses at the University of Tokyo and Keio University.
Professor Hara contributed to Japan’s recent property law reform as a researcher appointed by the Ministry of Justice. She has also participated in a committee-level study group on secured transactions reform convened by the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. She is a public interest member of the Central Labor Relations Commission and a member of the Working Group on Regional Financial Institutions under the Financial System Council of the Financial Services Agency.
Internationally, she represented Japan at the Diplomatic Conference adopting the MAC Protocol and has participated in UNCITRAL Working Groups I and VI. She previously served on the UNIDROIT Working Group for the Model Law on Factoring and is currently a member of the UNIDROIT Working Group on Principles on Verified Carbon Credits.
Dr Janis Sarra is Professor of Law Emerita at the University of British Columbia, previously serving as Associate Dean of the Law Faculty. She held the title of UBC Presidential Distinguished Professor, 2014 to 2019 and has the honour of being a Distinguished University Scholar. She was founding Director of the National Centre for Business Law, co-founder of the Canada Climate Law Initiative, Director of Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, and was Director of the Canadian Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Professionals, the International Insolvency Institute, and the Canadian Insolvency Foundation. She is currently a Director of Assuris, and is a member of the Canadian Delegation to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law WG V (UNCITRAL). She served as an expert on the UNIDROIT International Working Group on Bank Insolvency, and the World Bank Insolvency and Creditors Rights Task Force on Insolvency of Non-Bank Financial Institutions. She is a member in good standing of the Law Society of Ontario. Her more than 125 publications and 14 books have been cited in more than 250 appellate insolvency law judgments. Her most recent books include: Financial Institutions in Distress, Recovery, Resolution, Recognition, co-authored with Davis et al (Oxford University Press 2023); From Ideas to Action: Governance Paths to Net Zero (Oxford University Press, 2020); Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise Insolvency: A Modular Approach, co-authored with Davis et al (Oxford University Press 2018); and the 2025 Annotated Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, (Thomson Reuters, 2025).
Neil B. Cohen, 1901 Distinguished Research Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, has been a key participant in major domestic and international law reform projects with respect to commercial transactions for over three decades. In the United States, he has served as Reporter for Revised Article 1 of the Uniform Commercial Code and for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law of Suretyship and Guaranty; in honor of his accomplishments as Reporter for the Restatement, he was named as the Institute’s R. Ammi Cutter Reporter. Professor Cohen also was the U.S. Reporter for the recently promulgated Principles of Law for the Data Economy, a joint project of the American Law Institute and the European Law Institute. He has served as Director of Research of the Permanent Editorial Board for the Uniform Commercial Code since 1998. Internationally, Professor Cohen has long experience in the modernization and harmonization of commercial law. He has served as a member of United States delegation to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law for its work on harmonizing and modernizing the law of secured credit, as a member of the Working Group at the Hague Conference on Private International Law that prepared its Principles on Choice of Law in International Commercial Contracts and as a member of two current Expert Groups, and as a Working Group member for the work of UNIDROIT in its development of principles for international contracts and for enforcement of claims and for its preparation of the Model Law on Factoring. Since 2009, he has been a member of the United States Department of State’s Advisory Committee on Private International Law. Professor Cohen is a co-author of Farnsworth, Sanger, Cohen, Brooks and Garvin, Contracts: Cases and Materials and of Twerski and Cohen, Choice of Law: Cases and Materials for a Concise Course on Conflict of Laws as well as dozens of other books and articles concerning domestic and international commercial law. Professor Cohen received an S.B. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a J.D. from New York University School of Law, where he was a Root-Tilden Scholar.
Professor Sir Roy Goode KC is Emeritus Professor of Law in the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford. He holds the degrees of DSc(Econ) from the University of London and DCL from the University of Oxford as well as honorary doctorates from the Universities of London and East Anglia and the University of Law. Author of several textbooks on commercial law, corporate insolvency law and secured transactions widely used by students, practitioners and the courts he was a solicitor for many years before moving to the Bar and is an Honorary Bencher of the Inner Temple. He founded the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, in 1980 and is its Honorary President. He has served as a member of the Committee on Consumer Credit and the Departmental Committee on Arbitration and was Chairman of the Pension Law Review Committee, the reports of all three committees being implemented by legislation.
Associated with UNIDROIT for some 50 years, and a former member of its Governing Council, he has produced all four Official Commentaries on the 2001 Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment and its associated Protocols.
Professor Hartkamp (born 1945) began his career in the law as an assistant of Roman Law in the University of Amsterdam and wrote his PhD thesis in that field (Der Zwang im römischen Privatrecht, 1971). He wrote that book in München and Rome. In the Dutch Historical Institute in Rome he met Ebeltje Jonxis, art historian. They married in 1972 and have two daughters and five grandchildren.
Between 1974 and 1990 he was a member of the Netherlands Civil Code Revision Office (Dutch New Civil Code, in force since 1992).
He was an Advocate General and Procureur General (1986-2006) at the Dutch Supreme Court, writing opinions in private law cases.
He wrote commentaries in several volumes on the Dutch law of Obligations (eight editions between 1982 and 2015) and he was a part time professor at the Universities of Utrecht (1991-1999) and Amsterdam (1999-2006), where he taught European and comparative contract law. He was a member of the UNIDROIT Working Group on Principles of International Commercial Contracts and of the Commission on European Contract Law (‘Lando Commission’).
In 2006 he returned to the university (Radboud University Nijmegen) and set up a research group and various research projects on the interaction between European law and national private law. In addition, he was active in national and international arbitration.
He was a member of the UNIDROIT Governing Council from 1984-2023. He is a member of the Netherlands Academy of Sciences, of the Academia Europea and of the Senate of the European Law Institute.
Professor Iacopo Donati is the UNIDROIT/Bank of Italy Chair Holder and is mainly responsible for assisting in the Bank Insolvency project. He is Professor of Corporate and Insolvency Law at the University of Siena, and coordinates the research project ‘Pro.Re.Ba.’ (Proportionating rules on bank crisis prevention and management to the case of retail banks), which has received funding from the Italian Ministry of University. He has previously taught corporate law at the University of Venice ‘Ca’ Foscari’, at the University of Florence and at the University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’.
Professor Donati is the author of several publications on corporate law, restructuring, insolvency law, and bank crisis management. On the same topics, he has been invited as a speaker to various international and national conferences and participated in some high-impact international, European, and national research projects. Professor Donati’s education includes a Ph.D. in Corporate Law (University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’), an LLM in Corporate Governance (Stanford Law School), and a Law Degree with honors (University of Florence). He is qualified as an attorney in Italy and in the State of New York (USA).
Ms Olga Fonotova is an Associate Professor of the Faculty of Law (Department of Legal Regulation of Business) at the Russian National Research University “Higher School of Economics” in Moscow. She holds a PhD degree cum laude in private law / private international law from the Lomonosov Moscow State University (2006). Her academic and teaching interests cover private international law, international and national commercial law, with a focus on unified and non-state legal regulation of cross-border commerce.
Olga is a Russian law qualified practicing lawyer in the sphere of national and international commercial and corporate law with 20+ years’ experience in leading law firms. As part of her legal practice, she has advised multinational corporations on the setting up of multi-jurisdictional commercial relations, on the formation / termination of international joint ventures, restructuring of assets, and financing / refinancing of projects. For her work on commercial and corporate legal matters she was included in the international rating of leading lawyers “The Best Lawyers® in Russia” (2018 – 2022).
She is a UNIDROIT alumna (2011) and a Correspondent of UNIDROIT in Russia (2023 – 2025). From 2016 to 2021 Olga was a member of the ICC Commission on Commercial Law and Practice (ICC CLP) and a member of the Association of European Business (AEB) in Moscow.
Allan M. Mukuki, PhD Candidate (Navarra, Spain), LLM (Groningen, Netherlands), PGDip (KSL), LLB (Hons) (UoN), ACIArb (London), Advocate of the High Court of Kenya.
Allan Mukuki is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya as well as a Commissioner for Oaths. He is presently a PhD Candidate at the University of Navarra in Spain. He is also a holder of an LL.M in International Law and the Law of International Organizations, from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He has an LL. B (Hons) from the University of Nairobi, he is a Member of the Cha
rtered Institute of Arbitrators (London). He further holds a post-graduate diploma in law from the Kenya School of Law. Allan is also a scholar from the Hague Academy of International Law.
Some of his many roles in the legal profession include Director of International Partnerships; a Doctoral Fellow; member of the Management Committee and moot court coordinator, all for Strathmore Law School; Research Fellow for the African Region (Kenya), for the European Research Council Grant Project on the interpretation of customary international law; and Acting Director for the Strathmore Institute of Advanced Studies in International Criminal Justice (SIASIC)
Allan has previously worked at A.F Gross Advocate; in various legal institutes; in governmental agencies and in the Judiciary of Kenya. He was also a Legal researcher in the Office of the Solicitor General, Kenya, for the Maritime Delimitation in the Indian Ocean (Somalia v. Kenya), a case that was before the International Court of Justice. His main areas of specialization include Public International Law, The Law of International Organizations, International Humanitarian Law, International and Regional (EAC) Refugee Law and Legal Policy Development.
Further, Allan has been involved in various national and international legal consultancies and projects; he has published several peer reviewed legal articles, a legal monograph and presented several legal papers in international conferences around the world. He has also developed several policy documents for Strathmore University as well as (currently operational) manuals and laws for the operation of the Judiciary as well as governmental agencies and regional agencies such as IGAD.
ANDREA SANTACOLOMA
Director
PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Andrea Santacoloma is a Panamanian lawyer that focuses her practice on international commercial arbitration.
Prior to joining Adell & Merizalde, Andrea was the Deputy Director for Latin America of the ICC International Court of Arbitration for 5 years. In this role, she gained vast experience in the internal functioning of the ICC’s Secretariat and Court and saw first-hand the work of hundreds of arbitrators and ICC Court Members in the region. Andrea was also in charge of identifying new opportunities and potential users of the ICC Dispute Resolution Services (ICC DRS) in Latin America, in liaison with the ICC National Committees and other institutions in the region. She also worked as a lawyer advising local and international clients on business and corporate law and M&A in 3 Panamanian law firms.
She is currently the Executive Director of the Latin American Arbitration Association (ALARB), one of Latin America’s leading associations gathering practitioners and arbitrators, which seeks to encourage the use of arbitration and foster initiatives for the development of international arbitration in the region.
In July 2022, the G
overning Council of the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) appointed Andrea as a Correspondent for Latin America. Namely, Andrea was appointed as a Correspondent for the Republic of Panama for the period 2022-2025.
EDUCATION
• American University Washington College of Law, LL.M. in International Arbitration and Business Law
• International Training Centre of the International Labor Organization (ILO) jointly with the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), Università degli Studi di Torino, and University Institute of European Studies (IUSE), LL.M. in International Trade Law & Dispute Resolution
• Universidad Católica Santa María La Antigua, LL.M. in Corporate Law
• Universidad Católica Santa María La Antigua, Degree in Law and Political Science
• Centro de Estudios Regionales de Panamá, Diploma in Entrepreneurship and Management of Small and Medium Enterprises
Bar admissions
Republic of Panama
Languages
Spanish, English, Italian (intermediate)
asantacoloma@adellmerizalde.com
+507 370 4155
NAME: PROF. DR. HERNANY VEYTIA (LL.M. YALE)
AFFILIATION DIRECTOR BNM-CAMBRIDGE STUDY CENTRE ON SUSTAINABLE INVESTMENTS
PRESENTATION
Professor of law, international strategic consultant, arbitrator, and entrepreneur. Hernany Veytia is very comfortable with complex, high-profile and confidential transactions. Her consulting experience as partner of BNM and Deloitte enables her to focus on and add value to the sustainable and commercial aspects of each deal. Frequently she leads transdisciplinary teams to deliver fact findings and legal opinions, feasibility studies and turn-key projects for banks, governments, international organisations, and corporations willing to expand or withdraw operations in other jurisdictions.
In Prof Veytia’s experience UNIDROIT works have been very useful to understand not only the foreign law, but also to recognise the cultural, political, and economic factors at play, and the way national and international regulators operate-and cooperate. In her opinion, UNIDROIT instruments have been of utmost importance for the legal strategies she designed for:
• DANPREIT (Dispute Analytics Platform for Real Estate Investment Trusts in the Agriculture, Construction and Mining industries).
• TELEKAIROS, innovative methodology that incorporates the use of space assets.
• Corporate art collections, restitutions, including donations, sponsorships, and loans to museums.
• Contracts used by a German waterworks company willing to grow in all the Caribbean and Central American countries.
• Liquidation of commercial and investment banks
• IPOs and reverse mergers for companies in the extraction industries (Canadian stock exchange), ILS listed in Bermuda and African sovereign funds listed in London.
• Franchising and other commercial contracts in the food & drinks, health, aero-space, and automotive industries.
In the last three decades Prof. Veytia has lived, and successfully completed investments and disinvestments in more than forty countries in the five Continents. She is frequently appointed as arbitrator and invited as speaker on risk transfers at international industry conferences in fields of her expertise: energy (both renewable and traditional), artificial intelligence, infrastructure, mining, real estate, agriculture, rail, space, automotive, and franchising. She sits in the board of directors of companies in Europe including the United Kingdom.
Professor of Commercial Law, Carlos III University of Madrid. Currently, Sir Roy Goode Scholar at UNIDROIT, Rome, 2021-2022. Chair of Excellence 2017-2018 at University of Oxford (Uc3m- Santander Program), affiliated to Harris Manchester College. Previously Distinguished Visiting Professor and fellow of a number of Academic Institutions. Arbitrator of Madrid Court of Arbitration. Member of ELI (European Law Institute) Council and Executive Committee. Member of the Expert Group of the European Commission on Liability and New Technologies and member of the Expert Group of the European Observatory of Platform Economy; the International Academy of Commercial and Consumer Law; the expert group of the Inclusive Global Legal Innovation Platform for Online Dispute Resolution – UNCITRAL and Hong Kong Department of Justice. Expert of the UNIDROIT Study Group on the MAC Protocol of the Cape Town Convention on International Interests. Delegate of Spain to UNIDROIT for the adoption of the Protocol, delegate of Spain in Working Group VI of UNCITRAL on secured transactions and in Working Group IV on Electronic Commerce. Member of UNIDROIT Working Groups on Enforcement and Warehouse Receipts.
Marina Schneider is Principal Legal Officer and Treaty Depositary at UNIDROIT. She studied law at the University of Strasbourg (France) and Paris I – Panthéon Sorbonne. She joined the UNIDROIT in 1987 and was involved in the elaboration and French versions of most UNIDROIT instruments since. She is in charge of the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects and of the UNESCO-UNIDROIT Model Provisions on State Ownership of Undiscovered Cultural Objects. She is the author of the Explanatory Report of the 1995 Convention and many articles on the Convention and other international instruments in the field. Ms Schneider is also responsible for the project on private collections and for the UNIDROIT Convention Academic Project (UCAP). She is member of the Board of the International Society for Research on Art and Cultural Heritage Law (ISCHAL).
A Swedish national, Ms Lena Peters grew up in Italy where she attended an English school. In 1978 she took her Juris Kandidatexamen at Stockholm University followed by a Master of Laws from King’s College, London (1979). Since 1985 she has been with UNIDROIT, first as Research Officer, lastly as Principal Legal Officer, her main duties being Secretary to the Working Group for the Preparation of Principles of International Commercial Contracts, Secretary to the Study Group on Franchising, Secretary to the Committee of Governmental Experts on Franchising.She also collaborated on the project for the preparation of the ELI-Unidroit Model European Rules of Civil Procedure. She is currently Managing Editor of the Uniform Law Review and responsible for publications at UNIDROIT.
William Brydie-Watson is an Australian lawyer who specialises in secured transactions law and private international law. Before joining UNIDROIT, William was a government lawyer in the Private International Law and International Arbitration section of the Australian Attorney-General’s Department, where he worked primarily on treaty negotiation and the implementation of private international law treaties in Australia. At UNIDROIT, he is primarily responsible for the implementation of the Mining, Agriculture and Construction (MAC Protocol) to the 2001 Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment and the development of a Model Law on Factoring. William also serves as UNIDROIT’s liaison with the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and as manager of the Institute’s Scholarship and Internship Programme. Admitted to practice in New South Wales and the High Court of Australia, he has a Bachelor of Arts (honours), a Bachelor of Laws and a Master of Laws from the Australian National University. William also lectures on International Secured Transactions Law at the Eotvos Lorand Faculty of Law in Budapest.
Anna Veneziano is the Deputy Secretary General of the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT). She is a Professor of Comparative Law at the University of Teramo, Italy, where she was formerly the Director of the Department of Private Law. She has also formerly been a tenured Professor of European Property Law at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Her education includes a Law Degree with honours from the University of Rome La Sapienza, an LL.M degree from the Yale Law School funded by a Fulbright scholarship, and a PhD degree from the University of Florence (Italy).
Her main research and publication areas are on secured transactions as well as international, comparative, and European contract and sales law. Before joining UNIDROIT she was a member of the Italian delegation with respect to the Cape Town Convention on International Interests on Mobile Equipment and its Aircraft Protocol as well as its Space Protocol. She was also a member of the Study Group on a European Civil Code and of the Compilation and Redaction Group on a Draft Common Frame of Reference on European Private Law (DCFR), and of the restricted Expert Group set up by the European Commission on a common European law on sales.
P
rofessor Ignacio Tirado was appointed Secretary-General by the Governing Council at its 97th session, and officially took office on 27 August 2018. A national of Spain, Professor Tirado (Commercial, Corporate and Insolvency Law, Universidad Autónoma of Madrid, Spain) holds a PhD from the Universities of Bologna and Autónoma de Madrid and an LLM from the University of London. Professor Tirado has been a Senior Legal Consultant at the World Bank’s Legal Vice-Presidency and Financial Sector Practice for more than nine years, having also consulted for the IMF on insolvency related matters as well as for the Asian Development Bank on commercial legal reform.
Amongst other accolades to his professional experience, Professor Tirado is a founding member of the European Banking Institute, an International Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy and has been Director and Academic Co-Chair of the International Insolvency Institute.
