Profile
Dr Anna Howard is a Post-doctoral Research Assistant at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London, where her research focuses on mediation and investor state dispute settlement. Anna is a member of the UNCITRAL Academic Forum on Investor-State Dispute Settlement and a member of Queen Mary’s Centre for Research on Law, Equality and Diversity. Anna was the Associate Editor of the Kluwer Mediation Blog from 2016-2021.
Anna completed her PhD (on EU cross-border commercial mediation) at Queen Mary in 2019. Prior to starting her PhD, Anna was Lecturer of Law at the School of Law, Singapore Management University.
Anna qualified as a solicitor (England & Wales) in 2003 and practised EU and UK competition law at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Field Fisher before moving to Singapore where she started her academic career. In 2014, Anna trained as a mediator (Core Solutions).
Anna studied Modern Languages at Oxford University (The Queen’s College) and was then sponsored by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer to study law as a postgraduate at The College of Law.
Research
Anna’s main area of research is mediation and in particular cross-border mediation. Anna’s book, EU Cross-Border Commercial Mediation, Listening to Disputants – Changing the Frame; Framing the Changes, was published by Wolters Kluwer in January 2021. Anna’s book is based on her PhD research for which she interviewed senior in-house counsel of multi-national companies regarding their use of mediation for their EU cross-border commercial disputes.
Anna is also working with colleagues at Queen Mary and Cardiff University on a multi-disciplinary research project on international investment arbitration.
Publications
Anna's book, EU Cross-Border Commercial Mediation, Listening to Disputants – Changing the Frame; Framing the Changes, was published by Wolters Kluwer in January 2021. Read reviews of Anna's book.
Anna was the Associate Editor of the Kluwer Mediation Blog from 2016-2021 and is a frequent contributor to the blog. Read her blog posts.
Public Engagement
Anna is a member of the UNCITRAL Academic Forum on Investor-State Dispute Settlement. Anna is also a member of the Facilitators’ Group of the World Mediators Alliance on Climate Change.
Events
Speaking invitations
- Invited by UNCITRAL and the Ministry of Law, Singapore, to speak at the Investor-State Dispute Settlement Capacity-Building Workshop, UNCITRAL Academy (1 September 2022).
- Invited by Steinbeis Mediation (Germany) to deliver a webinar on her book for Steinbeis’ EU-funded InMediate project (27 June 2022).
- Invited by Scottish Mediation to be keynote speaker at the Mediate 2021 conference on 15 & 16 November 2021.
- Invited by the Athens Mediation and Arbitration Organisation to give an opening speech (“An empirical study: listening to disputants regarding their use of EU Cross-Border Commercial Mediation”) at the 3rdEODID International Mediation and Arbitration Conference (19 May 2021).
- Invited to present her book’s findings as part of the ADR Midweek Talk series, Austria (28 April 2021).
- Invited by Scottish Mediation to speak about the impact of her book’s findings on the promotion of mediation: “Listening to Disputants – Changing the Frame; Framing the Changes” (22 April 2021).
- Invited by CEDR to deliver a Masterclass on EU Cross-Border Commercial Mediation (8 April 2021).
- Invited by Core Mediation (Scotland) to speak at an event to discuss her book’s findings with John Sturrock QC, Professor John Lande and Charlie Irvine (11 March 2021).
- Invited by The London Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (London Branch) and the London Court of International Arbitration to be a panellist at their co-hosted event “Sustainable ADR – Recalibrating for the future” (18 February 2021).
- Invited to speak at the UNCITRAL ABLI Emergence Conference 2018 in Singapore following submission of her paper: “Direction or distraction? A direct enforcement mechanism for cross-border commercial mediated settlement agreements: the EU perspective” (25 July 2018).
- Invited to speak and facilitate at workshop sessions on the future of mediation at the International Academy of Mediators Conference in Edinburgh (10-11 May 2018).
Other events
- Together with Professor Stavros Brekoulakis and Dr Daniel Behn, Anna was a moderator of a seminar on “Impartiality in Investment Treaty Arbitration” hosted at Queen Mary (22 October 2019).
- For National Mediation Awareness Week, Anna organised and chaired the event “Challenging Mediation Misconceptions” hosted at Queen Mary (19 October 2017).
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