our team.
Professor Dr jur Petra Butler - Director
Petra has worked for and with small states for over ten years, in particular in the Pacific. Before taking up the directorship of the Institute she was the co-director at the Centre for Small States at Queen Mary University of London. Her areas of expertise are human rights and international commercial law.
Ana Tuiketei - Deputy Director (Pacific Islands)
Ana is a Barrister of the High Court of Fiji and the first Pacific counsel on a global roster working for the International Criminal Court (ICC). She is an elected member of the Defence Committee and the membership committee for ICC's Bar Association. In addition to her expertise in criminal matters she is an (international) arbitrator. She is the first Pasifika female lawyer to be on the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS) general list and only one of two Pacific Island women accredited as Oceania rugby judicial officers. She was appointed to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Independent Ethics Board in June 2022 for a three year term.
From 2017 to Jan 2019 Ana was a Visiting Foreign Lawyer at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP. She has worked as a consultant to the ADB on projects relating to Pacific Island states.
Ana is a sessional lecturer with the School of Law, University of the South Pacific and a part time consultant with the Fiji National University. She is currently the General Secretary for the Fiji Chamber of Commerce and Industry. She sits on the Fiji National Research Ethics Review Committee and the Fiji Industry Training Advisory Committee (NPTC), and formerly served as the Vice President for the Fiji Women Lawyers Association.
She has been involved in presenting before the Fiji Parliamentary Committees; drafting legislative reviews, strategic policies and industry negotiations for regional institutions such as University of the South Pacific, Fiji National University, Ministry of Health, Fiji Employers Federation; Fiji Hotel Association, Fiji Hairdressers Association, statutory bodies, non-profit organizations; international organizations, private and public sector organizations. Currently she is studying for an LLM at Pepperdine University on a Fulbright scholarship.
Professor Ilan Kelman (UCL) - Science
Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction
Institute for Global Health
Dr Sarina Theys (NCL) - security and political power
Affiliation: Newcastle University (NCL) - School of Geography, Politics and Sociology and School of Arts and Culture.
Current position: Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lead Researcher for the Ontological Security of Pacific Island Countries and Islanders project (OSPICs).
Guy Hewitt is the former High Commissioner of Barbados in London. Hewitt has been a strong advocate for the Commonwealth of Nations and Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
Dr Nicole A. Pierce (BA, JD, MBA, LLM) - Deputy Director (PROJECTS)
Dr Nicole A. Pierce is a Senior Lecturer in International Trade Law and Private International Law at the Faculty of Business and Law (BAL) at De Montfort University. Prior to joining De Montfort she delivered undergraduate and postgraduate courses at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS) at Queen Mary University of London and Northumbria University.
She has also worked in the private sector as an Attorney-at-Law and the public sector at the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce (MIIC) in Jamaica. Dr. Pierce is an expert in law reform and implementation having acted extensively in the Caribbean region (CARICOM and OECS) with particular focus on harmonization of commercial laws.
Rebecca Matijevich - Assistant Deputy Director (Pacific Islands)
Rebecca is currently a Law and Arts student at Victoria University of Wellington, majoring in Political Science and Education. She has a strong passion for Human Rights, Criminal Law and Indigenous Legal Issues. She is currently a tutor for LAWS212; The Law of Torts and recently completed a summer clerkship in the Criminal Appeal team at the Crown Law Office. Rebecca has been with ISMS since 2021 working as a research assistant investigating how Indigenous Customs and Religion can be harnessed to address Domestic Violence in Samoa. Rebecca was particularly focused on investigating the use of gendered language and customary titles in domestic violence proceedings. In 2024, Rebecca moved to the University of Sussex in Brighton, to complete her law studies as a part of the Global Exchange programme.
our advisors.
Professor Catherine Iorns (VUW) - Climate Change
Faculty of Law
our advisory board.
Steven Finizio is a lawyer who focuses on international dispute resolution. He is recognised as one of the leading lawyers for international arbitration by Chambers and the Legal 500, as a “Thought Leader” by Global Arbitration Review’s Who’s Who in International Arbitration, and as a leading public international lawyer by Legal 500. He has advised parties regarding disputes under the rules of most of the well-recognised international arbitration institutions and governed by the laws of jurisdictions in Europe, Asia, Africa and the US, as well as under bilateral and regional investment treaties. He has appeared as counsel in a number of regional courts, including the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. His recent publications include “Small States and Integration: An Introduction,” in Integration and International Dispute Resolution in Small States (Springer 2018). Steven is a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP’s international arbitration group.
Penehuro Lefale has a postgraduate degree in International Environmental Legal Studiesand Bachelor of Science (Physics & Mathematics) degree.In his early career, he worked with a team to develop the language for the Kyoto Protocol and worked with negotiating teams during the UNFCCC Conference of Parties meetings. In his professional career, he was inter alia the Climate Coordinator for the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) and Scientific Officer of the World Climate Program in the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Serving as the lead author for the Chapter on Small Islands for Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in 2007, he earned a Nobel Peace Prize with his climate colleagues.
our interns.
Jivaan Bennett - Deputy director (Caribbean)
Jivaan is a Senior Associate and Head of the Caribbean Group at leading international firm, Linklaters. His practice is a mix of corporate and commercial advisory as well as contentious work with a particular focus on taxation matters. Prior to joining Linklaters, he spent several years in practice as a tax attorney at a Big4 firm in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. Outside of legal practice, he is a visiting lecturer on the International Tax Law LLM programme at King’s College London where he delivers lectures and supervises dissertations on international tax law and EU tax law. Jivaan has also served as the course convenor/module leader for various undergraduate and postgraduate law modules at the University of the West Indies (Barbados). His research interests centre on international tax law and policy (with a particular focus on Latin America and the Caribbean) and economic integration in developing regions of the Global South. In this regard, he has presented at various conferences, published on such topics and has previously acted as lead legal consultant to the Government of a Commonwealth Caribbean jurisdiction on its tax reforms.
Jivaan is a passionate advocate of diversity, equity and inclusion within the legal profession. He is the current DE&I officer on the Poverty & Social Development Committee of the International Bar Association (IBA). For his efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in the legal profession, he was awarded in 2021 the Black Solicitors’ Network Rising Star Award (Private Practice) at the UK Diversity Legal Awards.
Magdalen Gibson - Communications Manager
Magdalen is currently a Law and Communications student at the University of Canterbury, majoring in Political Communications. Magdalen joined the ISMS team in 2024 and is enjoying the crossover of Law and Communications. Magdalen moved to the University of Helsinki in Finland, to complete her communications studies as part of the Global exchange programme.
Dr Radika Kumar - International Trade and Economic Analysis and Negotiations
Trade Specialist
Commonwealth Secretariat
Dr. Johanne Fischer
Since 1998, Johanne occupied senior positions within international organisations, first as Deputy Director of the European Global Ocean Observing System (EuroGOOS, at the time based in Southampton, UK), followed by the role of coordinator of the European Directory of the Initial Ocean Observing System (EDIOS, University of Hamburg, Germany); then, from 2003, as Executive Secretary of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) in Canada (Halifax, Nova Scotia); from 2009 as Senior Fishery Resources Officer at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Italy (Rome), and finally, from 2014 to 2018 as Executive Secretary at the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) in New Zealand (Wellington). Johanne now works as a free-lance consultant and coach from Berlin, Germany.
Over the years, Johanne’s work experience and publications covered diverse subject matters, e.g. international fisheries management, fish ecology, the ecosystem approach to fisheries, fishers’ ecological knowledge, species identification, endangered species (CITES), conservation and management of sharks, IUU fishing and others. Johanne is passionate about music and for many years taught concert flute at a municipal music school in Berlin while studying biology, literature and linguistics. During this time, her interest in development policies and conservation led to longer study stays in Somalia and Ghana, where she explored topics such as desertification control and links between culture and environment
Margarette Macauley is the former President of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). In addition to her Presidency she is an attorney in private practice in Jamaica, serves as mediator in the Supreme Court of Jamaica and as associate arbitrator, as well as serving as notary public. Margarette served as a judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights from 2007 to 2012, contributing to the formulation of the Court's Rules of Procedure. She is an honoured member of the Gender Justice Legacy Wall of notable women's rights advocates, who have brought about important changes. She took part in the reform and drafting of laws in Jamaica and is well known as a strong proponent of and authority on women's rights.