Shahla Ali is a Professor and Associate Dean (International) of the Faculty of Law and Director of the LLM in Arbitration and Dispute Resolution at the University of Hong Kong. She is an arbitrator with over 18 years of cross-border experience in the Asia Pacific region.
Shahla’s research centers on questions of governance, sustainable development and cross-border dispute resolution and mitigation in the Asia Pacific. She is the author/co-author of Forming Transnational Dispute Settlement Norms (Edward Elgar), Governing Disasters: Engaging Local Populations in Humanitarian Relief (Cambridge U. Press). She is also the co-editor of International Commercial Arbitration in Asia (Juris). She writes law journals in the area of comparative dispute system design drawing on empirical, interdisciplinary and comparative methods.
Professor Shahla Ali specialises in international commercial arbitration (ICA) and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) developments in Hong Kong, particularly in the context of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, as well as innovations and challenges in Chinese alternative dispute resolution (ADR) pedagogy drawing from extensive field experience in assessing negotiations in the geopolitical sphere.
She has consulted with USAID, AIIB, ADB, IFC/World Bank and the United Nations on issues pertaining to access to justice, peace process mediation training and land use conflict resolution.