Shahla Ali is a Senior Fellow of the Asia Global Institute, 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, sustainable development and cross-border dispute resolution in the Asia Pacific region. She serves as a bilingual arbitrator (English/Chinese) with CIETAC, HKIAC, KCAB and SIAC. 

Shahla 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. She has served on the World Bank/IFC mediation rosters, the Academic Council of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration, UNCITRAL Working Group II, and IBA’s Investor-State Mediation Rules drafting committee. Regionally, she has served as a member of the Department of Justice’s (HK) Mediation Regulatory Framework Sub-Committee, the HK Financial Dispute Resolution Appointments Committee, HKIAC’s Women in International Arbitration Committee, and the Executive Committee of the Asia-Pacific Mediation Forum.

Dr. Ali’s work highlights the role of devolved participation, legal harmonisation and regional diversity in the design of cross border dispute resolution systems. 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.

Research and Publications

Ali, S. (2025) Deciding lawsuits outside of court: mediation in Hong Kong. In Comparative Civil Procedure (pp. 501-514). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Ali, S. (2024) Conciliation Beyond the Courts-Aspirations and Limits of Mandated and Voluntary Court Mediation Programmes from a Multi-Jurisdictional Perspective. Comparative Procedural Law and Justice.

Ali, S. (2024) Mediation and Sustainable Development along the Belt and Road. Available at SSRN 5099109.

Ali, S. (2024) Preventing Challenges: The Independence and Impartiality of Arbitrators in Hong Kong. Asian Dispute Review.

Ali, S. (2024) The Seeming Paradox of Prevention: Dispute Mitigation by Multilateral Development Banks. 43 C.J.Q Issue 2, 142-168.

Ali, S. (2024) Comparative International Arbitration Law in Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Law (Yap, P,J. and Siems, M. Eds). Cambridge University Press.

Ali, S. (2023) Decentralized Global Legal Ordering, Michigan State Law Review. Vol. 2023, No. 2. 

Ali, S. and Neuhaus, S. (2023) The Emergence of Soft Law as an Applicable Source of Procedural and Substantive Law in Cambridge Compendium of International Commercial and Investment Arbitration (A. Bjorklund, F. Ferrari and S. Kroll, Eds.) Cambridge University Press.

Ali, S. (2023) Advancing Research and Practice in the Governance of Dispute Resolution Institutions through Inclusive Devolved Reflection in Comparative and Transnational Dispute Resolution (Ali, S., Ed.) Routledge.

Ali, S. (2023) Introduction: Comparative and Transnational Dispute Resolution in Comparative and Transnational Dispute Resolution (Ali, S., Ed) Routledge. 

Ali, S., (2022) Fluidity of Culture: Convergence and Informed Divergence in Cross Border Arbitrationin Diversity in International Arbitration: Why it Matters and How to Sustain It (Colombo, G. F., Ali, S., Balcerzak, F,., Karton, J. Eds) Edward Elgar.

Colombo, G. F., Ali, S., Balcerzak, F,., Karton, J. (2022) Introduction: Reaching Sustainable Diversity in International Arbitration, in Diversity in International Arbitration: Why it Matters and How to Sustain It (Colombo, G. F., Ali, S., Balcerzak, F,., Karton, J. Eds) Edward Elgar.

Ali, S., (2021) Transnational Commercial Law of Arbitration: Developments and Controversies in Oxford Handbook of Transnational Law (Peer Zumbansen Ed, forthcoming). Oxford University Press.

Ali, S. and Komolo, E., (2020) UNCITRAL’s Engagement in African and Latin American Dispute Resolution and Reform, Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, Vol. 35, No. 3.

Ali, S. (2019) The Power of Reflection – Advancing Transnational Dispute Systems through Devolved Reflection and Shared Knowledge Generation, Journal of Baha’i Studies.