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NUS Law welcomes Visiting Faculty – AY 2025/2026 Semester 1
NUS Law is delighted to welcome the following Visiting Faculty for AY 2025/2026, Semester 1:
Phase 1
Professor Barnali Choudhury and Professor David Fox, the Lionel A. Sheridan Visiting Professors; Professor Eva Micheler, the Visiting Jernal Singh Khosa Professor; Professor Gabriella Citroni; Professor James Davey; Professor Martin Petrin; as well as Visiting Senior Fellow Jonathan Lim and Visiting Fellow Cai Xiaohan.
Phase 2
Professor David Collins, the Kwa Geok Choo Distinguished Visitor; Professor Stephen Mason; Associate Professor Filip Saranovic; Associate Professor Zhou Chun; as well as Visiting Senior Fellows Dr Sanam Saidova and Dr Irina Sakharova.
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The professors in Phase 1 were introduced to the NUS Law family at the Start of Term Welcome Lunch, which took place at the Oei Tiong Ham Lobby on 13 August 2025, while the Phase 2 professors were warmly received in September 2025.
At the Welcome Lunch, faculty members took turns to introduce the visiting professors, offering details on their illustrious background and anecdotes to break the ice. Amid the informal lunch setting, the atmosphere was convivial, with much cheerful conversation.
Read: NUS Law welcomes visiting faculty – AY2024-2025 Semester 1
About the Professors/Fellows and their courses:
Phase 1:
Cai Xiaohan (Arbitration and Dispute Resolution in China)
Ms Cai Xiaohan is a senior associate in the Litigation/Controversy Department at WilmerHale and a member of the International Arbitration Practice Group. Ms Cai also regularly acts as secretary to tribunals and arbitrators. She has particular experience with construction and infrastructure, franchise, and mining disputes.
Ms Cai has advised on and represented clients in commercial arbitrations and investment arbitrations under a variety of rules (including the SIAC, ICC, LCIA, ICDR, AAA and UNCITRAL rules), governing laws (including Singapore, English, U.S., Chinese, Indonesian and Cambodian law), and seats (including Singapore, England, the US and Switzerland). Ms Cai is admitted to the Singapore Bar, and has represented clients in commercial litigation and enforcement proceedings before the Singapore courts.
Barnali Choudhury (Int’l Perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility)
Professor Barnali Choudhury is a Professor of Law and the Director of the Jack & Mae Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security at the Osgoode Hall Law School. Prior to joining Osgoode, she was a Professor at University College London and academic director of UCL’s Global Governance Institute.
She is a leading expert in business and international economic law, with a focus on human rights. Her books include The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: A Commentary (2023) and Corporate Duties to the Public (2019). She has held visiting positions at institutions including NYU, Cambridge and the Max Planck Institute, and her research is widely cited by academics, governments, the UN and international tribunals.
Gabriella Citroni (United Nations Human Rights Mechanisms)
Professor Gabriella Citroni is a Professor of International Human Rights Law at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy. Since August 2021, she is a member of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (since September 2024, she is the Chair-Rapporteur).
Her research focuses on subjects related to international human rights law and she cooperates with a number of NGOs providing legal assistance to victims of gross human rights violations and their relatives in different countries, including Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Honduras, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal and Peru. She has written a number of articles and books on international human rights law.
James Davey (Law of Marine Insurance)
Professor James Davey is a Professor of Law at the University of Bristol. He is also President of the British Insurance Law Association. He holds undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from the University of Nottingham and has contributed extensively to the field through both scholarship and public engagement.
Professor Davey has presented his work internationally, including at the Rutgers University Centre for Risk and Responsibility. His work on insurance fraud was influential in arguments before the UK Supreme Court, and in changing commercial practice. Professor Davey’s research and teaching focus on contract and commercial law, with a particular emphasis on insurance law.
Professor David Fox holds the Chair of Common Law at the University of Edinburgh. Before coming to Edinburgh, he was for many years a Fellow of St John’s College in the University of Cambridge, where his teaching touched on most aspects of private law, concentrating on property, trusts, Roman law and monetary law. He has also held visiting posts at the National University of Singapore. He is a Barrister in England and Wales, with a door tenancy at Maitland Chambers in Lincoln’s Inn.
His research interests have a strong historical and comparative focus. They concentrate on the formation of modern trust and property doctrine in common law systems, and on the private law applicable to money.
Jonathan Lim (Arbitration and Dispute Resolution in China)
Mr Jonathan Lim is a triple-qualified English solicitor, Singapore advocate, and New York lawyer with a focus on complex international disputes. He has a broad practice representing clients in all types of commercial and investment treaty arbitrations seated in common law and civil law jurisdictions worldwide, including England, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, France, Brazil, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
His experience also includes ad hoc and institutional arbitrations under the rules of the HKIAC, ICC, ICDR, LCIA, PCA, SIAC, UNCITRAL, and others. He has represented both private sector and government clients in the aerospace, construction, energy, financial services, insurance, telecommunications, technology and retail sectors, among others.
One hallmark of Mr Lim’s practice is advising global companies, boards and high net worth individuals on a broad array of China-related matters.
Eva Micheler (Corporate Governance – Law and Theory)
Professor Eva Micheler studied law at the University of Vienna and at the University of Oxford before joining LSE Law School in 2001. She is a Professor of Law at the London School of Economics. Professor Micheler is also on the management committee of the Systemic Risk Centre at LSE.
She was a TMR fellow at the Faculty of Law of the University of Oxford and teaches regularly at the University of Vienna and the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg.
Martin Petrin (Anglo-American Corporate Governance)
Professor Martin Petrin is the Jarislowsky Dimma Mooney Chair in Corporate Governance at York University, with a joint appointment at Osgoode Hall Law School and the Schulich School of Business. He has previously served as the Kwa Geok Choo Distinguished Visitor at NUS Law, a Distinguished Fellow and Visiting Professor at Notre Dame London, a Visiting Professor at NYU London, and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law and the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and Private Law.
Professor Petrin has practised law at a leading international business law firm and is admitted to the Bar in New York and Switzerland.
Phase 2:
Professor David Collins (International Economic Law for the Digital Economy)
Professor David Collins is a Professor of International Economic Law at the City Law School, City St George’s, University of London. He specialises in the law of the World Trade Organization and international investment law. A former prosecutor for the Attorney General of Ontario, he is a Solicitor of England & Wales and is a member of the Ontario and New York Bars.
He heads City Law School’s Digital Trade Research Group and is currently co-editing Routledge’s Handbook on International Economic Law. He has authored numerous articles and books, and is Co-Editor in Chief of the journal International Trade Law and Regulation and Series Editor for Routledge’s Insights on International Economic Law.
Professor Stephen Mason (Electronic Evidence)
Professor Stephen Mason is a legal scholar and practitioner, known for his expertise in electronic evidence and technology law. He was called to the Bar by the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple in 1988 and has served as a Visiting Lecturer at the School of Law, University of Tartu, Estonia, as well as an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.
Professor Mason is also affiliated with the Centre for Technology, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & the Law at NUS Law. He is notably the joint editor, alongside Professor Daniel Seng, of the practitioner text Electronic Evidence and Electronic Signatures (5th edition, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies for the SAS Humanities Digital Library, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2021).
Associate Professor Filip Saranovic (Maritime Law)
Dr Filip Saranovic is a Senior Lecturer in Shipping Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London. He is the Director of the International Maritime Law LLM programme and the Director of the Insurance, Shipping and Aviation Law Institute (ISALI). Dr Saranovic’s teaching and research covers both wet and dry shipping as well as the conflict of laws / enforcement of maritime claims. He is also an External Examiner at King’s College London.
Dr Saranovic’s book, Freezing Injunctions in Private International Law (2022), is based on his doctoral thesis completed at the University of Cambridge. Part of the research for the book was conducted in the United States where he was a Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School.
Associate Professor Zhou Chun (Business Law in China)
Dr Zhou Chun is an Associate Professor at the Zhejiang University Guanghua Law School, where she also serves as Executive Director of the Civil and Commercial Law Institute and Vice Director of the Insolvency Law Centre. She has a Doctor of Laws from Peking University, a master’s from Columbia Law School (where she was recognised as a James Kent Scholar) and a bachelor’s from the Yuanpei Pilot Programme at Peking University.
Dr Zhou’s research interests focus on comparative corporate governance, corporate law, and securities regulation.
Assistant Professor Sanam Saidova (Trade Finance Law)
Dr Sanam Saidova is an Assistant Professor in the School of Law at the University of Nottingham. Dr Saidova has a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Nottingham; a master’s in International Commercial Law from the University of East Anglia and also from the Tashkent Institute of Law (Uzbekistan); a Graduate Diploma in Legal Studies from the University of Birmingham; and a bachelor’s from the University of World Economy and Diplomacy (Uzbekistan). She is Co-Director of the University of Nottingham Centre of Commercial Law.
Dr Sanam Saidova specialises in English and international commercial and contract law. Her research and teaching interests lie in the law of contract, secured transactions, personal property, international trade finance and sale of goods.
Assistant Professor Irina Sakharova (Contract Theory)
Irina Sakharova is an Assistant Professor in Commercial Law at Durham Law School, where she is also a member of the Institute for Commercial and Corporate Law and of the Durham Centre for Law and Philosophy. She earned her Magister Juris from the University of Oxford, where she was a Hill Foundation Scholar. She completed her Doctor of Philosophy under the supervision of Professor James Penner at NUS Law, where she was a Graduate Research Scholar and then an NUS President’s Graduate Fellow. Her PhD thesis, Understanding the Legal Power to Contract, was awarded the Wang Gungwu Medal and Prize for the Best PhD Thesis in the Social Sciences and Humanities.
Dr Sakharova’s research is situated in private law and legal philosophy, and most centrally in contract law, contract theory, and comparative contract law, and is currently focused on the nature of contractual rights and persons’ power to contract.