Profile

Dr Pontian Okoli (PhD, LLM - Dundee; LLB - Nigeria), Barrister and Solicitor, has focused on facilitating international commerce through International Commercial Law and Private International Law as well as their intersections with building resilient institutional/legal frameworks that promote transparency and efficiency. His experience in various aspects of international commercial dispute resolution (in law practice and the finance industry) informed this trajectory as he represented clients based in Europe and the United States; and worked with European law firms on various international commercial legal transactions including mega syndicated loans. He is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and a fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

His research and publications have a clear interface with policy articulation, economic implications, and sustainability; and collaborations include interdisciplinary work with economists. Pontian's research also pivots around the inadequacies, gains and prospects of international instruments especially regarding their implications for developing countries. In 2025, UNCITRAL invited him to speak as an expert panellist at the Colloquium on Possible Updates to the Guide to Enactment and Interpretation of the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency. Pontian is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Stirling, Scotland, where he teaches Commercial Law and Private International Law.