FACULTY

Marie-Élodie Ancel is a professor at University Paris-Panthéon-Assas, where she mostly teaches private international law and comparative law. Professor Ancel regularly publishes case notes and articles related to dispute resolution and applicable law, mostly regarding contracts, intellectual property and e-commerce. Her first book was dedicated to La prestation caractéristique du contrat (Economica, 2002) in French law and European private international law. Co-author with Professors Pascale Deumier and Malik Laazouzi of a book on international contracts (Sirey, 2020), she has also been working with Professor Hélène Gaudemet-Tallon on the new editions of her book Compétence et exécution des jugements en Europe (LGDJ) since 2018.
In 2013, she created Lynxlex, an online legal database dedicated to the private international law instruments of the European Union.
Furthermore, Professor Ancel is one of the vice-chairpersons of the Comité français de droit international privé, a member of the Comité français de l’arbitrage and one of the co-founders of the International Academy for Arbitration Law (Arbitration Academy).

Cristina Antonello is an associate at PARAGON Advocacy in Vienna.

She specializes in international arbitration and litigation and has represented clients in cases involving a range of common and civil-law jurisdictions. She has experience in ad hoc as well as in institutional arbitrations conducted under major institutional rules (including the Vienna, ICC, DIS, HKIAC and the CAM-Milan Rules).

Prior to joining PARAGON, Cristina worked as a trainee lawyer in Italy and as an arbitration paralegal in Austria.

She has contributed to various publications on topical issues in alternative dispute resolution and is a member of several international arbitration associations.

Cristina studied law in Italy (University of Ferrara) as well as in Austria (University of Graz) and is admitted to practice as an attorney-at-law (avvocato).

Chiara Azzaroni is a PhD Student at the Department of Legal Studies at the University of Bologna – Alma Mater Studiorum, where she conducts research on cross-border litigation, with a particular focus on issues of international jurisdiction. She also researches international arbitration and arbitration-related litigation.

Ioana Bratu is an arbitration lawyer and legal scholar specializing in law and technology, with a particular focus on the interaction between legal systems and digital platforms. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Law and Technology under the joint supervision of Professor Robert Herian (University of Exeter) and Professor Charles Barthold (The Open University).

Letizia Ceccarelli is an associate in the International Dispute Resolution Practice in our Milan and Geneva offices.

Letizia has experience in investor-state arbitrations under the arbitration rules of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Dispute (ICSID) and United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). She has also acted for private companies in international commercial arbitration proceedings conducted under the rules of the London Court of International Arbitration, International Court of Arbitration and Milan Chamber of Arbitration. Her cases have involved a wide range of sectors, including oil and gas, construction and infrastructure, aerospace and telecommunications.

Letizia has also assisted both Italian and foreign companies in commercial litigation in courts in Italy, focusing in particular on contract disputes and bankruptcy disputes.

Giovanni Chiapponi is legal administrator at the Court of Justice of the European Union and post-doc researcher in private international law at the University of Florence.
He holds a PhD in law at the universities of Luxembourg and Bologna. He previously worked as a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for 5 years.
His area of expertise deals with EU procedural and private international law.

Maria Beatrice Deli is Founding Partner of DeliSasson, Rome-Milan. She is Professor of International Law currently serving at the Universitas Mercatorum in Rome.

Her areas of expertise include international commercial and investment arbitration law and complex litigation, acting as counsel and arbitrator. As counsel, Professor Deli spent 15 years in the international department of a major Italian law firm, where she gained extensive experience with foreign-based clients in a wide range of commercial disputes across a variety of industries.  She initially gained arbitral tribunal experience by serving as the administrative secretary to tribunals in complex international cases, and she now acts as sole arbitrator, co-arbitrator, and tribunal chair in arbitral proceedings, both ad hoc and institutional, with seats in various countries.

In 2011 Maria Beatrice was appointed Secretary General of the Italian Association for Arbitration (AIA-Associazione Italiana per l’Arbitrato), overseeing the promotion of the institution in Italy and abroad. She is Chair of the ICC Italy Commission on Arbitration and ADR. From 2013 to 2021 she was Secretary General of ICC Italy. From April 2016 to March 2021, she was a member of the Council of the Milan Chamber of National and International Arbitration.

Maria Beatrice is member of the Anti-Doping National Court of Appeal and presently included in the List of CAS Anti-Doping Division Presidents of the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Maria Beatrice is also author of articles and books (most recently, with Massimo Coccia, a handbook on international arbitration) and member of various international associations on arbitration, like Club Espanol e Iberoamericano del Arbitraje, Arbitral Women, ICCA, a Founding member of ArbIt (Italian Forum on International Arbitration and ADR) and member of the ICC World Business Institute.

Marco Farina is Adjunct Professor (Professore a contratto) of Civil procedure at the Law faculty of L.U.I.S.S. Guido Carli of Rome. He also teaches International Arbitration at the European University of Rome.

He holds a PhD degree in Civil Procedure from the Sapienza University of Rome (2007).

He regularly lectures and speaks at academic and professional conferences.

He is author of two book and around 65 papers covering different areas of civil procedure (both domestic and transnational), arbitration and insolvency law.

He is a practicing lawyer since 2003 and has been entitled to practice before the Supreme Court (Corte di Cassazione) since 2016.

His areas of practice are litigation and arbitration in commercial and corporate matters (both before national courts and arbitrators), insolvency related matters and corporate and banking contractual transactions.

He is a member of the European Association of Private International Law (EAPIL) and of the Associazione Italiana fra gli Studiosi del Processo Civile (AISPC).

He coaches teams of University of Bologna for the Vis Moot competition and the Pax Moot Competition. 

Francesca Ferrari, a professor of Civil Procedure Law at the University of Insubria – Como/Varese, has an extensive academic background, having served as a visiting scholar at both Harvard Law School and Maastricht University. She holds the qualification for full professorship both in Civil Procedure and in Comparative Law. She boasts a prolific publication record, with over one hundred works focusing on civil procedure and intellectual property (IP) subjects, including four books and numerous essays published in esteemed journals. Presently, she holds the position of IP and Consumer Protection attaché at the Italian Permanent Representation at the European Union, appointed by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In addition to her academic pursuits, she is also an experienced lawyer and had been partner and of counsel of several law firms in Milan, the latter being Eptalex, with offices in Beirut, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, etc. Ferrari's professional trajectory has endowed her with profound insights into Intellectual Property (IP) law, particularly in transnational litigation involving patents and trademarks, with a focus on pharmaceuticals. She also possesses expertise in copyright law, particularly in relation to emerging technologies and artificial intelligence as well as in antitrust law. Actively engaged in scholarly communities, Ferrari is a member of several scientific associations and seats in the editorial boards of prestigious journals. She is frequently invited to speak at both domestic and international conferences on civil procedure and IP-related matters.

Franco Ferrari is the Director of NYU’s Intesa Sanpaolo Center for Transnational Litigation, Arbitration, and Commercial Law. Professor Ferrari has been a member of NYU’s full-time faculty since 2010. He has previously been a tenuref professor of law schools in Italy and the Netherlands. He served as a member of the Italian delegation to UNCITRAL and was Legal Officer at the UN Office. Professor Ferrari is a prolific author. He is also a recipient of the 2018 Certificate of Merit for High Technical Craftmanship and Utility to Practicing Lawyers and Scholars awarded by the American Society of International Law; a member of the editorial boards of various peer-reviewed law journals. Prof Ferrari also acts as an arbitrator in international commercial arbitrations and investment arbitration.

Aleksandrs Fillers is an Associate Professor at the Riga Graduate School of Law and a faculty member at the University of Antwerp. He holds a Doctorate from the University of Antwerp. His primary teaching and research expertise covers private international law, international commercial law and arbitration law. He also is a coach of the Riga Graduate School of Law Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot team. He is an author of multiple publications on EU private international law, international commercial and arbitration law, and has co-authored multiple studies on implementation and application of EU legal instruments.

Albert Henke, Ph.D, is Associate Professor of Civil Procedural Law, Jean Monnet Professor of Transnational Commercial Litigation and Aggregate Professor of International Commercial and Investment Arbitration at Università degli Studi di Milano. He is the founder and scientific coordinator of the Center of Research DEUTraDiS (on Domestic, European and Transnational Dispute Settlement) and the Director of the Statale Litigation & Arbitration Moot Courts (Vis, Pax, Fiamc and Sam). He is author of more than 70 publications in the field of domestic, international, comparative and European civil procedural law as well as domestic, international commercial and international investment arbitration. He is member of the editorial boards of numerous Italian and foreign legal journals and has lectured held in several foreign universities, including Columbia Law School, New York. He has been National Reporter for Italy for an EU Evaluation Study on the impact of national procedural laws and practices on the free circulation of judgments and winner of two EU Jean Monnet Modules (2015-2018 and 2020-2023) in the field of European civil procedure.

Admitted to the Bar in Italy (2005), he has been Associate Legal Expert at the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (Vienna) (2005 – 2006) and Consultant for the Dispute Resolution Department of Clifford Chance Law firm (Milan) (2010 – 2019).

At present, he is an independent lawyer, legal consultant and arbitrator.

Nina Jankovic, Senior Associate at Aceris Law, holds an LLM in Public International Law from Leiden University, the Netherlands, and an LLB from Belgrade University, Serbia, graduating summa cum laude. She has a decade of experience in international construction, investment and commercial arbitration. Prior to joining Aceris, Nina was a Graduate Trainee in the International Arbitration Group of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in Paris and a former intern at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague. Nina has served as counsel in numerous arbitrations under the UNCITRAL, SIAC, SCC, ICC, LCIA, PCA, AAA, ICDR and other arbitration rules, involving English, Swiss, Bosnian, Saudi, Omani, Qatari, Uzbek, Angolan, Singapore, Montenegrin and other laws. Recent cases, concluded successfully in favor of Aceris Law’s clients, include, inter alia, an LCIA arbitration under Saudi law regarding the construction of a desalination plant in the Middle East; an UNCITRAL ad hoc arbitration involving the construction of a water distribution network in Angola; and a SIAC arbitration under Singapore law regarding the construction of a desalination plant in Oman. She has also represented a publicly listed Malaysian company in a USD 400 million dispute involving a natural gas construction project in Uzbekistan against a subsidiary of a Russian multinational company in the oil and gas sector, as well as a Greek construction company in an UNCITRAL arbitration administered by the PCA against a Bosnian state agency involving the construction of a wastewater treatment plant governed by Bosnian law. Nina has represented a French magnate, investor and high-net-worth individual, Mr. Bachar Kiwan, in a USD 800 million ICSID arbitration against Kuwait (Bachar Kiwan v. State of Kuwait, ICSID Case No. ARB/20/53). Clients praise her as a “very well organized”, a “methodical researcher” with “a very sharp intellect”, “cutting through unnecessary information with excellent drafting ability to present the case succinctly”. They also find her very “friendly and professional”, “easily approachable and very responsive”. Nina speaks English, Serbian/Croatian, Spanish, German, French and Italian fluently, and she has basic knowledge of Portuguese. She is qualified to practice law in Serbia.

Anastasia Kalantzi holds a PhD in Civil Procedure from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2023) and is currently undertaking postdoctoral research on the execution of conservatory and provisional measures.

She is also currently an Adjunct Faculty Tutor at the  Democritus University of Thrace and the Open University of Cyprus.

She holds an LLM from the London School of Economics and Political Science, as well as the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the International Hellenic University.

During her PhD studies, she conducted research in Luxemburg (MPI), as well as the US (US Business Law Academy at Columbia University, New York). She is the author of three monographs, as well as a number of contributions, academic articles and case comments, on topics related to civil procedure, private international law, arbitration and dispute resolution, both in Greek and English.

She is a member of the European Association of Private International Law and a practicing lawyer in Greece.

Tatevik S. Karapetyan, PhD, is Arbitrator at Dubai International Arbitration Centre, ICC Arbitration Delegate, Deputy Chair of Arbitration and ADR Commission of ICC Armenia, CiArb member.

Michele Angelo Lupoi is Full Professor of Civil Procedural Law at the Department of Legal Studies of the University of Bologna and Lawyer of the Bologna Bar Association.

He has written extensively in matters of transnational litigation, cross-border jurisdiction, procedural family law, international arbitration, and other areas of civil procedure.

He coaches the Unibo Vis and Pax Moot teams.

He is an editor of the International journal of civil procedure and of the Rivista trimestrale di diritto e procedura civile and is amember of the Associazione italiana tra gli studiosi del processo civile, the International association of procedural law, the European Association of Private International Law and he is responsible for the Emilia Romagna section of the Camera degli avvocati internazionalisti.

Pasquale Mazza holds a Ph.D. in Civil Procedure Law from University of Rome La Sapienza and is currently Adjunct Professor (docente a contratto) of Civil Procedure Law at the Law Faculty of LUISS Guido Carli.

He is the author of a book (Il foro dell’obbligazione nata in Internet, Naples, 2024) which addresses issues relating with civil jurisdiction in matters of extra-contractual and contractual obligations. His research interests have also included – inter alia – lis pendens under Italian private international law, the Anti-SLAPP Directive (EU) 2024/1069 and res judicata in international commercial arbitration.

He is a member of the Associazione italiana fra gli studiosi del processo civile.

Mark McLaughlin is Assistant Professor of Law at the Yong Pung How School of Law, Singapore Management University and the Singapore International Dispute Resolution Academy (SIDRA). His academic and professional career is dedicated to international arbitration and international economic law, with a particular focus on investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), and investor-state mediation.

For the past four years, he has devised the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) capacity-building workshop as part of the UNCITRAL Academy. Its focus is training government officials in the anatomy of different dispute resolution processes available for the settlement of investor-state disputes.

Indeed, Mark has advised and trained government officials worldwide on managing investment treaty commitments and navigating international arbitration. He also contributes to the global discourse on reforming investor-state arbitration through his membership in the ISDS Academic Forum.

Mark’s research, published in leading international journals, explores cutting-edge developments in arbitration, including investor-state mediation, state-owned enterprises in investment disputes, and the impact of emerging technologies on dispute resolution.

JUDr. Ing. Dominika Moravcová, PhD. MBA - currently serves as an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, Trnava University in Trnava, where she focuses on research and teaching related primarily to Private International Law and European Union Law. In addition to her academic role, she also lectures on PIL and EU law on an ad hoc basis for various institutions. Alongside her academic career, she has several years of experience in the private sector, where she is engaged in various entrepreneurial ventures.

Shamila Nair is an Advocate & Solicitor in Malaysia and a former Registered Foreign Lawyer in Singapore, with extensive experience in among others, cross-border corporate, commercial, technology, and data privacy and protection matters across Asia. Her practice focuses on bridging legal services and client support for businesses operating within Asia, ensuring seamless navigation of multi-jurisdictional legal landscapes.

As the Managing Partner of Peter Ong & Nair, she spearheads client engagements, practice area development, and the advancement of cross-border legal support and exchange initiatives, fostering strategic legal solutions for companies expanding into or operating across Asian jurisdictions. She also serves as the CEO of Nair Consulting in Dubai and has been appointed as an External Independent General Counsel for a listed company in Abu Dhabi, further strengthening her expertise in multi-jurisdictional legal advisory.

Her professional background includes working with top-tier firms in Malaysia, local and international firms in Singapore, including Deloitte Legal Singapore, where she provided legal support on APAC-wide matters. She has been recognised for her contributions to the legal industry, having been featured on Asia Law Portal’s "30 People to Watch in the Business of Law in Asia" and named a finalist for Women Lawyer of the Year and Young Lawyer of the Year 2024 by Asian Legal Business (Thomson Reuters).

Beyond her legal practice, Shamila was the former President of the Malaysian Association in Singapore (2021–2023), where she played a pivotal role in strengthening corporate, governmental, and trade collaborations between Malaysia and Singapore. She also serves as an arbitrator for moot competitions, with the Boston International Innovation Moot Competition being the most recent.

Pietro Ortolani is a Full Professor of Digital Conflict Resolution at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He holds a law degree from the University of Pisa and a Ph.D. in arbitration from LUISS Guido Carli University, Rome. Before joining Radboud University, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law and a Law Research Associate at Queen Mary, University of London. Pietro is admitted to the Bar in Italy and he also works as a practitioner, mainly in the field of arbitration and private international law. He has experience in both ad hoc and institutional arbitration. He has acted as an expert for the European Parliament, the European Commission, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law and the International Labour Organization.

Ilaria Pretelli, Docteure en droit privé (Université Paris 2, Panthéon-Assas) and dottoressa di ricerca in diritto internazionale (Università di Padova), licensed Lawyer (ordine degli avvocati di Pesaro) and Associate Professor in Italy (MIUR), she is responsible for Private International Law Research at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law. She teaches regularly at the Institut Catholique de Paris and formerly, at Paris I, Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris Saclay, Lausanne, Neuchâtel, Bergamo and Urbino.

She co-edits the Yearbook of Private International Law and serves on advisory councils for several legal journals. Co-chair of the Family and Succession Law Special Interest Group of the European Law Institute, she leads significant funded research including "JUST BONDING: Filiation in Private International Law" (2024-2028).

With expertise in  family law, digital platforms, civil procedure, and sustainable business practices, she has participated to the recast of the EU Regulations Brussels I and II and to the Proposal for a Regulation on Parenthood within the European Commission's Expert Group. She regularly organises conferences on innovative research in comparative and private international law within several research networks, and has authored multiple books and commentaries in Italian, French and English, including "Jurisdiction, Recognition and Enforcement in Matrimonial and Parental Responsibility Matters" (2023).

She took part in the work on the reform of several relevant european regulations and conventions.

Catherine Rogers is a Professor of Law at Bocconi University in Milan Italy and a Research Professor at University of California Law, San Francisco. She teaches and writes on topics relating to international arbitration generally, and the ethics of participants in international arbitration more specifically.

Among other appointments, Catherine is a Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the U.S. Law of International Commercial and Investor-State Arbitration, a co-chair of the ICCA-Queen Mary Task Force on Third-Party Funding in International Arbitration (together with William W. Park and Stavros Brekoulakis), and a member of various boards at institutions around the world.

She is currently working on the second edition of her book, Ethics in International Arbitration, which is forthcoming at Oxford University Press. 

Rinaldo Sali is the Deputy Director General of the Milan Chamber of Arbitration, a company owned by the Chamber of Commerce,  focusing on the organization and administration of its activities.

His main areas of specialization include arbitration, mediation, and the management of other Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanisms.

He currently serves also as the responsible coordinator for business crisis settlement procedures and over-indebtedness procedures.

He has attended numerous advanced courses in arbitration and mediation, and is the author of several books and publications on arbitration. He is also a regular speaker at both international and national conferences and seminars on arbitration and mediation.

He taught in several postgraduate master programs and until 2021 he taught arbitration law at the University of Castellanza.

Marco Torsello is a Full Professor at the University of Verona, School of Law, where he teaches Comparative Private Law and Transnational Commercial Law. He is also a Visiting Professor of Contract Law at the école de droit of Université Sciences Po, Paris, and a Global Professor of Law at NYU, School of Law (Law-Abroad Program in Paris), where he has taught European Business Law since 2014. He has held many other visiting professorships, including those at Bucerius Law School, NYU School of Law, Fordham Law School, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, University of Western Ontario, Columbia Law School, and others.

He is Titular Member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, and a member of several academic and professional associations, including the European Law Institute, the ICC Commission on Arbitration and ADR (Italian branch), the International Council for Commercial Arbitration, and the Società Italiana per la Ricerca nel Diritto Comparato.

He is the author of several books and papers dealing with contracts, international business transactions, and transnational dispute resolution.

Marco has over twenty-five years of experience in private practice, and he is one of the founding partners of ARBLIT – Radicati di Brozolo Sabatini Benedettelli Torsello, a boutique firm specializing in international commercial arbitration and litigation.

Anna Wysocka-Bar is an Assistant Professor at the Private International Law Center, Faculty of Law and Administration at Jagiellonian University in Kraków (Poland).

She is an Academic Coordinator of the EU co-funded project: EU Succession Regulation: First Decade of Application, Strengths, Challenges, Future Outlook (EUSuccess). 

Anna is an ordinary member of the European Association of Private International Law (EAPIL), one of editors of the EAPIL blog and a member of EAPIL Working Groups on International Property Law and on the Feasibility of a European Private International Law Act. She is a co-organizer of the annual EAPIL Winter School in Como (Italy). 

Anna is a co-author (together with Ewa Kamarad) of a monograph Private International Law in Poland, Wolters Kluwer: Alphen aan den Rijn 2020. 

She has given guest lectures on judicial cooperation in civil matters in many different institutions: in Italy at Università degli Studi di Milano, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Milano, Università degli Studi di Bologna and Università degli studi dell'Insubria in Como, in Germany at the European Law Academy; in China at the Minzu University of China in Beijing; in Turkey at the University of Istanbul; at the University of Jordan in Amman; in Egypt at the American University of Cairo, in Albania at Universiteti Mesdhetar. She was a visiting professor at Università degli Studi di Parma. She has been teaching at the Radboud Summer School in Nijmegen (the Netherlands), Ravenna Summer School (Italy) and EAPIL Winter School (Italy). 

Anna is a licensed attorney at law and a licensed tax advisor with years of experience in tax and legal consulting.

Stefaan Voet studied law at Ghent University (2001). In 2011 he wrote his PhD thesis about complex litigation in Belgium, for which he received in 2014 the Triannual Price of Civil Procedure awarded by the vzw Algemene Modellenverzameling voor de Rechtspraktijk.

Since 2015 he is an associate professor of civil procedure at the University of Leuven and a host professor at the University of Hasselt.

Stefaan was a visiting scholar at the University of Houston (2009) and Stanford Law School (2014). He was a visiting lecturer/professor at the University of Houston, SMU Dedman School of Law in Dallas, University of Tennessee, Syracuse University, China-EU School of Law in Beijing, University of Pavia, University of Pretoria and en EMARF (Escola da Magistratura Regional Federal da 2E Regiao) in Rio de Janeiro. In 2016-2017 he held the TPR (Tijdschrift voor Privaatrecht) Chair at the University of Utrecht (Molengraaff Institute for Private Law). In 2020 he was an external scientific fellow at the (former) Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law. He is a member of different working groups of the European Law Institute.

Stefaan is also a substitute justice of the peace in Bruges and a member of the board of directors of Ombudsfin. 

Serena Zoghaib is a PhD law candidate in Private International Law conducting research on the situations external to the European judicial area. Passionate about cross-border disputes in civil and commercial matters, she has participated in the Private International Law Moot court competition organized by Linklaters law firm and the University of Paris-Saclay in September 2023. She graduated from the Holy Spirit University (Lebanon) with a bachelor's degree in general and Lebanese law. She was awarded an Eiffel scholarship to continue her studies in Poitiers (France) where she obtained a Master's degree in International and European law. She won three prizes for her academic achievements (Paris Bar association and Caen Bar association prizes for the year 2024 and a prize from the University of Poitiers for the year 2023). She speaks three languages (French, English and Arabic) and aspires to become a member of the Hague Academy and to contribute to the unification of private international law in relations between the Member States of the European Union and third countries.