The Project was set up by Dr Róisín O’Shea of Ireland and Prof. David Hodson OBE KC(Hons) of England, following discussions over several years of their frustration of little progress in encouraging mediation for international families. In turn, a steering group has been formed of which details are here. The separate areas of work have their own working party of whom details are in the relevant sections of this website.
Dr Róisín O’Shea (CO-CHAIR) BL, Partner Arc Mediation, Chair of the Irish Professional Mediators’ Organisation CLG, IMI Certified Mediator, legal academic, co-author of Chapter 4 in the UK/Ireland Bloomsbury 2020 publication Family Mediation: Contemporary Issues.
Ministerial appointee the Child Maintenance Review Group Ireland 2020-2022.
Prof David Hodson (CO-CHAIR) OBE KC(Hons) MCIArb is a dual qualified English and Australian solicitor, mediator, arbitrator and part-time family court judge. He is an author of many books on international family law. He received the OBE for services to international family law.
He is co-founder and now special counsel of The International Family Law Group, London.
Pascal Comvalius is an IMI-Certified Mediator that specialises in mediating family and criminal cases. He taught the first ever special 40-hour family mediation course at the Supreme Court of Singapore and was the first to conduct family divorce mediation training in the UAE.
He is the former vice-president of APFM, current chair of the appraisal committee of IM, and a visiting faculty member at MNLU in Mumbai for the Masters Degree in Mediation and Conflict Resolution.
Andrew Davies is a highly experienced family law solicitor, mediator and arbitrator and co-founder and partner of O’Sullivan Davies (osullivandavies.com.au), Perth, Western Australia.
He is the current chair of the Australian Institute of Family Law Arbitrators and Mediators (AIFLAM), the primary organisation for family mediation in Australia.
Colm Brannigan is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators in the U.K. and holds the advanced designation of Chartered Med-Arbitrator through the ADR Institute of Canada and, has been a full-time ADR practitioner for over 25 years.
Colm is an acknowledged expert in the development of online dispute resolution (ODR) and med-arb processes and provides ODR and med-arb training through the Canadian Collaborative for Engagement & Conflict Management. Colm’s book, ODR – Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow. (co-authored with Marc Bhalla, with a forward by Colin Rule) was released on November 15, 2022.
Dr Margaret Connors, served as a First Assistant Prosecuting Attorney and Assistant Prosecuting Attorney for over 18 years and was a Michigan Tax Tribunal Referee for two years.
She is a lecturer at the University of Michigan Law School in Family Law Litigation and the application of Peace-making in state court justice systems. She is a Washtenaw County Peacemaker, Michigan, USA.
Judge Timothy P. Connors has been a State Court Judge since 1991. For eleven of those years he served as a Chief Judge.
Judge Connors presides over cases in the Civil and Domestic Divisions of the Washtenaw County Trial Court and handles the Neglect and Abuse docket for the Juvenile Court. He co-chairs the Michigan Tribal-State-Federal Forum. Judge Connors has also served by appointment as Judge Pro Tem for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians.
He is the Presiding Judge of the Washtenaw County Peacemaking Court.
Shabana Saleem is an international family mediator and lawyer based in the Middle East. She practices family law at Al Tamimi & Co., the largest regional law firm in the Middle East and North Africa. Her mediation practice is managed by Outer Temple Chambers.
Her legal expertise across a wide range of family law issues, including Sharia-related considerations, contentious and non-contentious divorce, finance, and children matters, informs her approach to conflict resolution. She is the first trained mediator with specialist family law expertise and divorce experience based in the UAE. Her co-authored paper, "The Legal Treatment of Islamic Marriage Ceremonies" (Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, 2018), was cited in the Court of Appeal decision Akhter v Khan [2020] EWCA Civ 122, addressing the validity of an Islamic marriage ceremony under English law. She has a particular understanding of cross-border issues with Sharia considerations.
Her clients reside across expatriate hubs in Islamic law countries such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia and/or have connections to Islamic law jurisdictions.
Dr Chinwe Umegbolu was an ESRC-UKRI-funded Postdoc fellow and a fellow of the American Bar Association (ABA) DR (Mediation Committee). She is serving as the American Bar Association (ABA) DR Ombuds Day (2024) Marketing Liaison and as a filter stage Judge for the British Podcast Awards 2024. She is a volunteer mediator at Oakland Mediation Center (OMC), a Barrister & Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria & a part-time lecturer at the University of Brighton.
In 2023, one of her book chapters titled ‘Access To Justice for Disabled People in Nigeria: A Case Study of a Therapeutic Day Care Centre’ was published online by Cambridge University Press. In 2024, her book ‘Appropriate Dispute Resolution in Comparative Perspectives Nigeria, the UK and the US’ was published by Springer Nature. She is an ADR Blogger, Podcast Trainer, Consultant, & Host of Expert Views on ADR (EVA) Vid / Podcast.