Dr Ana Bastida

Dr Ana Bastida is currently the Programme Leader of the MSc in Sustainability, a flagship interdisciplinary programme that draws on expertise across the University campus. She leads a research theme on law and resource & energy governance for transformative outcomes. Her scholarship maps out the role of law, policy, governance, and international cooperation in shaping global patterns of natural resources' extraction, and interrogates on the much-needed disciplinary, regulatory, and operational shifts for transformative change for sustainable and just futures. Her perspective is global, inasmuch as it looks at the intersection of energy and natural resources law with the global economy, investment, environmental and human rights law, and at the interdependence of multilevel normative orders for understanding problems and possible pathways to solutions. A great focus of her work is on metals sourced for the global economy and on their national and local impacts. She has keen interest in the diversification of sources and epistemic communities and in the role of Higher Education for catalysing sustainability and transformation. Since the start of her career, she has engaged with interdisciplinary research and teams, and publishes in law, economics, and development journals and in a variety of formats. 

She has long combined academic research on resources law and innovations in institutional design with strong engagement in technical reform and knowledge-exchange programmes and various epistemic communities. She has acted in expert advisory roles to governments (Argentina, Armenia, Côte d' Ivoire, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Georgia, Haiti, Mozambique, Mongolia), as well as intergovernmental organizations (IADB, UN, UNECA, IFC, World Bank, GIZ, DfID), companies (Anglo American, De Beers, YPF), non-governmental organisations (IUCN, RWI, Global Witness, Open Society Justice Initiative) and corporate institutions, regarding engagements in global governance as well as in jurisdictions as DRC, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Romania, Montserrat and St Helena Islands, United Kingdom, South Africa.

She currently seats as member of the Technical Advisory Board of the BEPS in Mining programme hosted by the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development (IGF) in partnership and the African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF), the Inter-American Centre of Tax Administrations (CIAT) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) aimed at building global efforts to address tax base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) in the mining sector.  She is also a member of the Expert Anti-Corruption Group on Critical Minerals convened by the NRGI, OECD Centre for Responsible Business Conduct and EITI. She is a founding member of Red Latinoamericana de Derecho Minero. She was the Academic Director of the Master’s in Mining Business Management at the Catholic University of San Juan, Argentina, which she supported from its creation as a highly impactful programme.

She started her line of research on the need of reforming historical regimes of resource tenure as a research fellow at the Institute of Social and Legal Sciences 'Ambrosio Gioja', Law Faculty, University of Buenos Aires (1992-1998). She later engaged in the practice and counselling of natural resources and environmental law with the firms Tomás de Pablos & Associates, and Hope, Duggan & Silva in Buenos Aires. She is a qualified lawyer in Argentina (Specialisation in Natural Resources Law, University of Buenos Aires, cum laude); LL.M in Resources and Environmental Law and Policy (CEPMLP, Dundee; with distinction), Ph.D (CEPMLP/Dundee). Member of the Environmental Law Group of the IUCN from 2000; Programme Officer of the International Bar Association’s Mining Law Committee; nominated by her peers in the Who’s Who of Mining Law consecutively from 1999; member of the Editorial Board of Global Energy Law and Sustainability, Mineral Economics and High Grade media platform; associate editor, Resources Policy; member of the Academic Board of Revista Argentina de Derecho de la Energía, Hidrocarburos y Minería.; and former Trustee-at-Large, The Foundation of Energy and Natural Resources Law.