WTO Eleventh Ministerial Conference

Hector Torres is a senior fellow with CIGI’s International Law Research Program, effective April 2017. He is a former executive director at the International Monetary Fund. At the World Trade Organization (WTO), he served on the Task Force on Financial Crisis and was the coordinator of Technical Cooperation for Latin America and the Caribbean. At CIGI, Hector will conduct research on global governance reform, on the Group of Twenty and WTO ministerial, and on promoting legal coherence in global policy making.

Hugo Perezcano Díaz is deputy director of international economic law with the International Law Research Program (ILRP) and was previously a CIGI senior fellow with the ILRP. Prior to joining CIGI, he was an attorney and international trade consultant in his private practice.

James Bacchus is a senior fellow with CIGI’s International Law Research Program, as well as the Distinguished University Professor of Global Affairs and director of the Center for Global Economic and Environmental Opportunity at the University of Central Florida. 

Maria Panezi is a research fellow with CIGI’s International Law Research Program. She holds a Ph.D. in law from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University, where she wrote her dissertation on transparency in the World Trade Organization.

Markus Gehring is a senior fellow with CIGI’s International Law Research Program (ILRP) focusing on international economic law, trade and climate change, as well as trade, investment and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). He is also the Arthur Watts Senior Research Fellow in Public International Law with the British Institute of International and Comparative Law and a fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge.

As director of CIGI’s International Law Research Program, Oonagh Fitzgerald established and oversees CIGI’s international law research agenda, which includes policy-relevant research on issues of international economic law, environmental law, intellectual property law and innovation, and Indigenous law.

Robert McDougall is a senior fellow with CIGI’s International Law Research Program (ILRP). His focus is on the legal aspects of inclusive trade, the digital economy, privacy standards, trade facilitation, Brexit, and the formal and informal mechanisms for dispute resolution.

Rohinton P. Medhora is president of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), joining in 2012. Previously, he was vice president of programs at Canada’s International Development Research Centre. He received his doctorate in economics in 1988 from the University of Toronto, where he subsequently taught. His fields of expertise are monetary and trade policy, international economic relations and development economics.

Valerie Hughes is a CIGI senior fellow and an adjunct assistant professor of law at Queen’s University. An expert in international trade law and international dispute settlement, she served as director of the Legal Affairs Division of the World Trade Organization (WTO) from 2010 to 2016 and as director of the WTO Appellate Body Secretariat from 2001 to 2005. Valerie also spent 22 years with the Government of Canada, and litigated before international courts and tribunals on trade law, investment law, and law of the sea matters.