QICDRC Training Programme on International Commercial Courts - October 2026

Lord Thomas has been President of the Qatar International Court since 2018.

Lord Thomas was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1969, becoming a Queen’s Counsel in 1984. In 1996, he was appointed a High Court Judge and was assigned to the Queen’s Bench Division, serving on the Commercial Court. In 2003, he became a Lord Justice of Appeal and was appointed to the Privy Council. He served as the Senior Presiding Judge from 2003 to 2006. 

In 2008, he was appointed Vice President of the Queen’s Bench Division and Deputy Head of Criminal Justice. In 2011, he became President of the Queen’s Bench Division. Thereafter, in 2013, he succeeded Lord Judge as Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. He retired from that post in 2017, prior to taking up the present position in Qatar where he succeeded Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers. 

Lord Thomas holds several extra-judicial posts, including as Honorary Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge and Fellow of the Universities of Cardiff, Aberystwyth, Swansea and Bangor and Honorary Doctor of Law of the Universities of South Wales, the West of England, Wales and of Cardiff Metropolitan University. He is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.

In 2016, he formed the Standing International Forum of Commercial Courts. He was appointed Chairman of the Financial Markets Law Committee in November 2017. He has been Chancellor of Aberystwyth University since January 2018.
 

Fritz Brand has been a judge of the Qatar International Court since 2019.

Immediately after receiving his LL.B in 1972, he was appointed as senior lecturer at the law faculty of the University of Stellenbosch, where he taught until the end of 1976. In 1977, he joined the Cape Bar where he practiced as an advocate until September 1992. During that period, he served on the Cape Bar Council for about ten years. In 1989, he received his letters patent as a senior counsel. In 1992, he was appointed as a judge of the High Court in Cape Town. After serving as an acting judge of appeal at the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein in 2000, he was appointed permanently to that court. In 2010, he was appointed as an acting judge to the Constitutional Court for two terms, retaining his permanent position on the Supreme Court of Appeal bench. Since his retirement from that Court in 2015, he has been appointed to the Appeal Court of Botswana and to the Supreme Court of Fiji - positions which he still holds.

Umar Azmeh was appointed Registrar in October 2022, and oversees the management of cases before the Qatar International Court and Dispute Resolution Centre. He is also a member of the senior management team and the Judicial Advisory Board.

Umar qualified and practised as both a barrister and a solicitor in the United Kingdom. He has extensive legal experience including work in government (having worked for the Attorney General of England and Wales, and for the senior judiciary in the Court of Appeal), private practice and in-house. Since joining the QICDRC, he has, among other things, authored the guide to proceedings before the QFC Court (the User Guide, also known as the ‘Maroon Book’), and is the co-author of Azmeh and Nicol on the Law and Practice of the QFC Civil and Commercial Court and Regulatory Tribunal (1st Edition, LexisNexis UK, 2025).

Umar holds an LL.B. degree from King’s College, University of London, an M.Sc. degree from the University of Oxford (Worcester College) where he graduated first in his year, and a doctorate in law from the University of Oxford (St Anne’s College).

Muna Al Kaabi is a Case Progression Officer at QICDRC, bringing diverse background and expertise to the role. Muna holds a B.A. in Art History from Virginia Commonwealth University and prior to joining the Court she previously worked at Qatar Museums for several years where she mastered the art of organisation and meticulous attention to detail.

She also holds an LL.M. in International Law and Foreign Affairs from HBKU College of Law with her thesis being recognized with the Outstanding LL.M. Thesis of 2024 Award. Currently, Muna is a Juris Doctor (J.D.) Candidate at HBKU College of Law further expanding her legal knowledge and expertise. 
 

Mohammed Alansari is the Case Manager at the QICDRC. Before that, he was the Legal Director of Qatar Museums, where he worked for eight years before joining our team. His work has mainly focused on commercial contracts.

Susan L. Karamanian is Dean of HBKU's College of Law. She previously held leadership positions at the American University of Sharjah and the George Washington University Law School. Susan is a member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) and was previously Vice President of ASIL. She was also President of the Washington Foreign Law Society. She has lectured on international law at the University of Paris, the OAS Academy of International Law, Tamil Nadu National Law School, the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, and the Hague Academy of International Law (Director of English Studies). She has presented two lectures (“The Right to Property under International Law” and “The Intersection of Public International Law and Private International Law”) as part of the United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law. She is a trustee of the Center for American and International Law, where she chairs the Southwestern Institute for International and Comparative Law, and a director of Texas Appleseed. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Council on Germany, the American Bar Foundation, and the Texas Bar Foundation.

Georgios (George) Dimitropoulos is a scholar of international economic law and regulation. His research aims at rethinking the boundaries between domestic and international law and reconceptualizing economic sovereignty and governance. A major focus has been the rise of new digital technologies and their interaction with traditional models of internal law.

George is an Associate Professor of Law, as well as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and S.J.D. Program Coordinator at HBKU College of Law. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and a Research Associate at the University College London Centre for Blockchain Technologies (UCL CBT). He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of World Investment & Trade (JWIT) and the Asia Pacific Law Review (APLR).

George studied law at the University of Athens, and holds an LL.M. and J.S.D. from Yale Law School, as well as an LL.M. and Ph.D. summa cum laude from the University of Heidelberg. Before joining HBKU he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg and a Hauser Research Scholar at New York University (NYU) School of Law. He has held visiting positions at the Athens Public International Law Center (AthensPIL), Singapore Management University (SMU), University College London Centre for Law, Economics and Society (UCL CLES), the Université Catholique de Lyon (UCLy) and the Jigme Singye Wangchuck (JSW) School of Law in Bhutan.

His work has appeared in journals such as the Washington Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, the Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business, the World Trade Review, and the Journal of International Economic Law. Some of his recent work includes a book on Regulating Blockchain: Techno-Social and Legal Challenges (with Philipp Hacker, Ioannis Lianos and Stefan Eich – Oxford University Press, 2019) and a book on International Commercial Courts: The Future of Transnational Adjudication (with Stavros Brekoulakis – Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Roscoe studied law at the University of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa where he obtained his BA and LLB degrees. He completed his training contract at Webber Wentzel in Johannesburg, one of South Africa’s largest law firms, and was admitted as an Attorney of the High Court of South Africa in 1999.

Shortly after that, he relocated to London and was admitted as a Solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales in 2000 while working in the Aircraft Finance team at Harbottle and Lewis, a boutique law firm in London’s West End.

In 2001 he joined Shell International in London as in-house counsel in the Downstream practice area.  He advised various Shell entities on a wide range of corporate and commercial matters including joint ventures, mergers, acquisitions and divestments. 

In 2011, he was seconded to Qatar Shell in Doha to advise on a petrochemicals joint venture with Qatar Energy returning to Shell’s London office in 2015.

In 2016, he returned to Qatar to join the Qatar Financial Centre Authority’s legal team where he currently serves as Acting Chief Legal Officer. 
 

Catriona Nicol is a Senior Legal Counsel (Litigation) for the Qatar Financial Centre Authority. She formerly practised at law firms in Qatar, California and the City of London, with a focus on international tax and complex litigation and arbitration. She qualified as a solicitor in 2008 and was admitted to the California Bar in 2011. She holds a BA in Jurisprudence from the University of Oxford (St Catherine’s College).