Dr Surya Subedi is Professor of International Law at the University of Leeds and a practising barrister in England. He has wide-ranging experience of advisory and advocacy work in several jurisdictions in public international law (broadly construed), international investment law, World Trade Organization law, international investment/commercial arbitration, and human rights law and has published widely in these areas. He was in 2004 appointed by the World Trade Organization to serve as a Member of the roster of Panellists of the WTO Dispute Settlement System. He has advised a number of countries including Britain, the Netherlands, Indonesia, Vietnam, Nepal, and Laos on various international legal matters and represented and advised three major public utility companies in two developing countries in their disputes with multinational companies. Prior to joining the Bar of England, he was a Consultant on international legal matters to Mishcon de Reya Solicitors in London. He originally was admitted to the Bar of Nepal in 1981 and practised there both as an Advocate and as a government lawyer during which he served as legal adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and to the Ministry of Commerce and Under-Secretary in the Ministry of Law and Justice. He has worked at the UN in New York as a Nepalese delegate.
He has been Professor of International Law since 1999 - first at the University of Hull and since 2004 at the University of Leeds. He is one of those rare academics who rose from a Lecturer to Professor in British academia within a matter of mere six years. He also is one of those rare lawyers who has received royal honours from the monarchs of two countries for his services to international law: Her Majesty the Queen of the UK appointed him an OBE - Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire - in 2004 and His late Majesty King Birendra of Nepal honoured him by the Order of Suprabal Gorkha Daxinbahu in 1998.
