Deals and Disputes: China, Hong Kong, and Commercial Law - Speaker Bios

For the conference program, please see here.

 

A photograph of a white woman with brown hair. Susan Finder is a scholar of China’s judicial system (in comparative perspective). Her current research concentrates on Supreme People’s Court and Chinese judicial reforms, much of which is published on her blog, the Supreme People’s Court Monitor. This is Finder’s second career in academia, and she comes to the School of Transnational Law at Peking University after twenty years in China-related practice at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer (and other firms), in legal publishing, and as a securities regulator. In her first academic career (at what is now the City University of Hong Kong), she published the first comprehensive study of the operations of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC). Professor Finder received her undergraduate degree from Yale College, her Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School, and a Master of Laws degree from Columbia Law School.

A photograph of a white man in a suit.Matthew D. Johnson (AB, Harvard University; MPhil, PhD, University of California, San Diego) is founder and principal of AltaSilva, LLC, where he provides China-focused advisory, due diligence, and risk mitigation services across a range of private and public sectors. As an academic he taught the history, politics, and foreign relations of modern China at the University of Oxford, and was dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Taylor's University, Malaysia. He was a Fulbright scholar and board member of the Malaysian-American Commission on Educational Exchange, and is a member of the National Committee on United States-China Relations.

A smiling woman with wavy brown hair.Katerina V. Ossenova is a Trial Attorney and manages the Office of International Judicial Assistance (OIJA) within the Office of Foreign Litigation at the U.S. Department of Justice. OIJA is the U.S. Central Authority for the Hague Service Convention, the Hague Evidence Convention, the Inter-American Convention on Letters Rogatory, and letters rogatory received through diplomatic channels. Ms. Ossenova also provides guidance and training to United States Government attorneys on how to serve process or obtain evidence abroad for use in U.S. litigation. Previously, Ms. Ossenova was an Attorney-Advisor International with the Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP) in the Office of the General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Commerce. In 2008, Ms. Ossenova received her Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and graduated with an International and Comparative Law Certificate. Ms. Ossenova earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations and History from the University of Virginia in 2003. 

A photograph of an Asian woman with bobbed hair. Jie (Jeanne) Huang is an associate professor at University of Sydney Law School. She teaches and researches in the fields of private international law, e-commerce law, international investment law, international litigation and arbitration, and underwater cultural heritage protection. She has published four books and authored more than forty articles in law journals, such as Journal of Private International Law and Journal of International Economic Law. She is a member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. She also serves as an Arbitrator at the Hong Kong International Arbitration Center, Shanghai International Arbitration Center and Xi’an Arbitration Commission.

A photograph of an Asian man. Wenliang Zhang is an assistant professor at Renmin University School of Law in Beijing, China, where he teaches courses on Private International Law and Commercial Arbitration. Zhang holds a PhD in Private International Law from Wuhan University, as well as a PhD in Private International Law from Ghent University from Ghent University. He was previously a postdoctoral researcher at Peking University, where he conducted research in the areas of private international law, commercial arbitration, and international disputes.

A white man in a suit.Peter Trooboff is Senior Counsel in the Washington, DC, office of Covington & Burling LLP, with nearly half a century of experience as an international lawyer.  He has practiced in the field of international trade and investment and has advised, written about, and lectured internationally on issues relating to transnational litigation.  He has helped draft important U.S. legislation on international legal issues and been a member of U.S. delegations to important treaty negotiations.  He has served as a member of the Curatorium of the Hague Academy of International Law, as President of the American Society of International Law, and as a member of the Editorial Board of the American Journal of International Law.  Trooboff has assisted governments and private multinational clients with regulatory, compliance, investigation, and enforcement issues arising under US foreign trade controls including those administered by the Commerce, Treasury, State and Energy Departments.  He has also served as both arbitrator and as party counsel in important international investment arbitrations.

A photograph of a man in a white suit.Ronald A. Brand is the Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg University Professor of Law, John E. Murray Faculty Scholar, and Director of the Center for International Legal Education at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. He regularly teaches courses in international business transactions, international arbitration and litigation, and matters of private international law.  In 2011, Brand delivered a special course on private international law at the Hague Academy of International Law. He is a former Fulbright Scholar in Belgium, a former Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Bologna, a recipient of the ABA Section on International Laws Leonard A. Theberge Award in Private International Law, the University of Pittsburgh Sheth Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement, and a recipient of a Dr. Jur. honoris causa from the University of Augsburg. Brand was a member of the U.S. Delegation to the Special Commissions and Diplomatic Conferences of The Hague Conference on Private International Law that concluded both the 2005 Convention on Choice of Court Agreements the 2019 Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters. He has helped train students for the Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot Competition from more than 30 countries.

A photograph of an Asian man in a suit.Tiong Min Yeo is the Yong Pung How Professor of Law and former Dean of the Singapore Management University School of Law. Yeo specializes in Asian comparative legal studies, conflict of laws, contracts, equity and restitution and has published articles in many of these areas. He has previously served as an Associate Professor for the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law. Yeo holds a Bachelor of Civil Law and PhD from the University of Oxford and earned his LLB from the National University of Singapore.

A photograph of a man in a suit. Julien Chaisse is a Professor at the City University of Hong Kong, School of Law. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Asia Pacific Law Review, and the recent recipient of the 10th Smith-Lowenfeld Prize from the International Arbitration Club of New York. His scholarship includes a dozen books and over 60 articles and book chapters. He is a Joint Editor-in-Chief of the Asia Pacific Law Review. He frequently serves as an arbitrator and expert witness and has also assisted numerous jurisdictions in drafting legislation.  He is President and Chair of the Asia Pacific FDI Network (APFN), an organization that focuses on researching foreign direct investment and facilitating cooperation among over 100 scholars and 50 institutions. Prior to joining CityU Law School, he taught at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Law (2009-2019) where he served as Director of the Faculty’s Research Centre as well as Director of PhD & MPhil Program. He earlier worked as deputy head of the team analysing the rules for multilateral trade and investment agreements at the World Trade Institute in Switzerland, as a lecturer at Sciences Po Aix in France, and as a diplomat for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in New Delhi.

A photograph of a woman in a beige coat. Xu QIAN is Associate Professor & “Hundred Talents Program Fellow” at Guanghua Law School, Zhejiang University, and a Research Associate at the Asian Academy of International Law (AAIL), with a research focus on alternative dispute resolution and economic, social & cultural rights. Her publications include the research monograph “Water Services Disputes in International Arbitration,” in the International Arbitration Law Library series, as well as articles in the American Journal of International Law (Unbound), the Asia Pacific Law Review, and the Asian Journal of WTO & International Health Law and Policy. She was a scholar-in-residence at The Hague Academy of International Law in 2019. She is an active member of the Asia Pacific FDI Network and the Academic Forum on Investor-state Dispute Settlement.

A photograph of a woman with dark hair. Shahla Ali is Professor of Law and Associate Dean (International) at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law and Director of the LLM Program in Arbitration and Dispute Resolution. Her work centers on questions of governance, development and cross-border dispute resolution in the Asia Pacific region. Ali has been engaged in dispute resolution reform at the regional and global levels including with USAID, IFC/World Bank and the United Nations on issues pertaining to access to justice, peace process negotiation training, financial dispute resolution and land use conflict resolution. Her recent books including Court Mediation Reform (Elgar, 2018), Governing Disasters (Cambridge, 2016), Consumer Financial Dispute Resolution in a Comparative Context (Cambridge, 2013) and Resolving Disputes in the Asia Pacific (Routledge, 2010), have informed legal developments in the Asia Pacific and contributed to the emergence of a growing body of work examining comparative dispute resolution systems from an interdisciplinary perspective.

A photograph of a white man in a suit.Antony Dapiran is a Hong Kong-based writer, lawyer and photographer. He is the author of two books on Hong Kong including his most recent, City on Fire: The Fight for Hong Kong (Scribe, 2020). His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, New Statesman, Quartz and Foreign Policy, among others, and he is a regular commentator on television and radio including BBC, CNN, CNBC and beyond. Daipiran is qualified as a lawyer in Hong Kong, England, and Australia. Over a twenty-year legal career, he advised many of China’s leading companies raising capital and doing business internationally on transactions that were transformational for China’s business and economic landscape. A fluent Mandarin speaker, he has resided between Hong Kong and Beijing for over twenty years.

A photograph of a white man in a suit.James Cook is the Associate Director of the Asian Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh where he oversees a Department of Education National Resource Center in East Asia. His research focuses on modern Chinese history and the Chinese diaspora in the early 20th century. Before arriving at Pitt, he spent 13 years as a faculty member at Central Washington University in Washington State, where he was Director of the Asian Studies Program.

A photograph of a smiling white woman. Eva Pils is Professor of Law at King's College London, an affiliated scholar at the US-Asia Law Institute of New York University Law School, and a member of the Centre for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg. She studied law, philosophy and sinology in Heidelberg, London and Beijing and holds a PhD in law from University College London. Her current research addresses autocratic conceptions and practices of governance, legal and political resistance, and forms of complicity with autocratic wrongs. Before joining King’s in 2014, Eva was an associate professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law. She is a member of the Academic Freedom and Internationalisation Working Group and a legal action committee member of the Global Legal Action Network.

A photograph of a white man in a suit.Pierre Landry is a Professor in the department of Government and Public Administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  Landry’s expertise is in local governance,  urbanization and development, authoritarian regimes,  East Asia and China. He has also been working on research projects in Vietnam as well as  in Tunisia, Malawi, Zambia and Kenya, in collaboration with the Program on Governance and Local Development at the University of Gothenburg. He received his Ph.D in Political Science at the University of Michigan and am also an alumnus of the University of Virginia (MA in Foreign Affairs) and the Johns Hopkins-Nanjing University program at the Center for Chinese and American Studies in Nanjing.

A photograph of a white man in a suit.Michael C. Davis is a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC, an affiliate research scholar at the US Asia Law Institute at New York University, and a professor of law and international affairs at O.P. Jindal Global University in India. Long a public intellectual in Hong Kong, he was a professor in the Law Faculty at the University of Hong Kong until late 2016. His scholarship engages a range of issues relating to human rights, the rule of law, and constitutionalism in emerging states, with frequent publication in such public affairs journals as Foreign Affairs and the Journal of Democracy, as well as academic journals. Amnesty International, the Hong Kong Journalists Association, and the Hong Kong FCC awarded him a 2014 Human Rights Press Award for his commentary on the 2014 Hong Kong "umbrella movement" in the South China Morning Post. His latest book on Making Hong Kong China: The Rollback of Human Rights and the Rule of Law (November 2020) is available from Columbia University Press: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/making-hong-kong-china/9781952636134