CIL is pleased to welcome Ms Melissa Loja as Research Associate with the ASEAN Law and Policy team. Melissa Loja is a PhD student at the Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong, where she also earned her LLM. Her doctoral dissertation is about linguistic and procedural indicators that non-state actors, as law applying authorities, incorporate into petroleum instruments to signal that specific industry practices are a source of international legal rules.

With the help of her supervisor and professors, Melissa has managed to produce research articles that were published in European Journal of International Law, Ocean Development and International Law, Leiden Journal of International Law and Journal of Energy and Natural Resources Law. Her article, ‘A Critical Legal Approach to the South China Sea Dispute’, is forthcoming in Journal of the History of International Law (2017).