Applications Open for UNIDROIT International Programme for Law and Development (IPLD) Africa Plus 2025

Irini Stamatoudi is a Law Professor at the University of Nicosia (Cyprus) and a lawyer at the Supreme Court of Athens (Greece). She is specialised in Copyright, Arts Law, Technology Law, and in Cultural Heritage Law. She holds degrees from the University of Athens – Greece (Law Degree) and the University of Leicester – UK (LL.M., Ph.D.). From 2007 – 2018 she was the General Director of the Hellenic Copyright Organisation (competent governmental organisation for copyright matters). She has taught at the Law School of the University of Leicester, on the joint LL.M. of the University of Turin, ILO, and WIPO, at the International Hellenic University, at the Academy of the World Intellectual Property Organization and on several other academic courses. For many years she acted as a legal counselor to the Ministry of Culture on issues of illegal trafficking of antiquities where she handled the famous return cases of masterpieces from the J. P. Getty Museum (in Los Angeles) and from the Leon Levy & Shelby White collection (NY). Since 1999 she has participated in several negotiation committees on the issue of Parthenon Marbles and is currently a member of the Ministry of Culture Advisory Committee on the Parthenon Marbles. She has published fourteen books in copyright and in cultural heritage law (whilst three more are in the pipeline) in Greece and abroad and several articles in academic journals worldwide. Some of her writings are considered internationally works of reference (e.g., I. Stamatoudi, Multimedia products as copyright works, Cambridge University Press, 2002, (reprint in paperback in January 2008, Kindle Edition 2010); I. Stamatoudi, Cultural Property Law and Restitution. A Commentary to International Conventions and European Union Law, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham (UK) – Northampton (US), 2011, I. Stamatoudi and P. Torremans (eds), European Union Copyright Law. A Commentary, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham (UK) – Northampton (US), 2014, and 2021 (2nd ed.)).

Marcel Fontaine is Professor emeritus of the Law Faculty of the Catholic University of Louvain, where he taught the law of obligations, the law of contracts and the law of insurance. He has taught as a guest professor in several other universities. From 1979 till 2010, he took part in the working group which elaborated the Unidroit Principles of International Commercial Contracts. For 17 years, he has chaired another international working group devoted to the systematic analysis of specific clauses appearing in international contracts. He has prepared a Draft Uniform Act on the Law of Contracts for the 17 African member States of OHADA. He has been Secretary General, and is now Honorary President of the International Insurance Law Association (AIDA). He has long experience as a commercial arbitrator, domestic as well as international, ad hoc as well as institutional. He is the author of many publications. He is doctor honoris causa of the Universities of Geneva, Montpellier, Bourgogne and Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Professor Verónica Ruiz Abou-Nigm is Chair in Private International Law at Edinburgh Law School. She has widely published in private international law and has taught and researched in Europe and Latin America. Her work is published in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Her research focuses on the intersections between private international law and other disciplines, including international commercial arbitration, shipping law, migration, sustainable development and legal education.

Professor Ruiz Abou-Nigm is President of the European Law Faculties Association (ELFA), Vice-President of the American Association of Private International Law (ASADIP), and Member of the Scientific Council of the European Association of Private International Law (EAPIL).

Antenor Madruga is a founding partner of the law firm Madruga BTW and recognised as a leading Brazilian lawyer in complex litigations and negotiations involving government criminal and administrative proceedings, particularly in multijurisdictional cases.  He was the lead counsel in several of the major white-collar cases in Brazil. He is currently a member of the Self-Regulation Board  of the Brazilian Federation of Banks (FEBRABAN). In his former career as a Federal Attorney, Mr. Madruga occupied several positions in the Brazilian government, among them: Director of the Department of Assets Recovery and International Legal Cooperation of the Ministry of Justice, Coordinator of the National Strategy Against Money Laundering (ENCCLA); Board of the Brazilian Financial Intelligence Unit (COAF); and National Secretary of Justice. Ph.D. in International Law.