Maria Chiara Malaguti

Practice Areas

Mariachiara is Full Professor of international law at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan/Rome, Italy), where she teaches trade law and international law and economics. She specializes and acts as advisor in International and European Union Law applied to financial markets, in international investment law and most recently in all aspects related to sustainable development and social responsibility in cross-border companies. She also studies issues concerning harmonization and conflict of laws.

Furthermore, Maria Chiara is legal expert to the Legal Service of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International cooperation, also assisting the State legal team (Avvocatura dello Stato) in international investment arbitral disputes. She represents Italy in all current negotiations for ISDS reform, and contributed to the drafting of the latest version of Italy’s Model BIT and Member of the Italian Arbitration Committee and ADR ICC Italy, she is also an Italian delegate of the ICC Commission on Arbitration and ADR. She is currently chairperson of the UNCITRAL Working Group on Micro, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises.

In August 2020, the Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs appointed Prof. Malaguti as President of UNIDROIT, the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law. This is the oldest international organization in existence and was founded from a project by Vittorio Scialoja. She is the first woman to hold this position.

Maria Chiara is also senior legal expert to the World Bank in payment systems, financial markets and governance, having assisted more than 60 different countries in the last 15 years.

She graduated in both Law and Economics at the University Alma Mater of Bologna, and received an LLM from Harvard Law School and a doctorate from the European University Institute of Florence. Maria Chiara has numerous publications, mainly focusing on financial markets, coordination of law, and sovereign debt, as well as international commerce in general.