Dr. Phiset Sa-ardyen currently serves as the Executive Director of the Thailand Institute of Justice (TIJ). He was previously the Director of the Information Technology and Communication Center at the Ministry of Justice, Thailand. For the period between 2014-2018 Dr. Sa-ardyen served as the Director of the Office of External Relations and Policy Coordination at the TIJ and was actively involved in the successful efforts by TIJ to become affiliated with the United Nations Crime Programme. Moreover, he oversaw the implementation of key policy directives on digital transformation and cyber security across the Ministry of Justice, including MOJ’s flagship project on big data analytics for recidivism prediction and offender rehabilitation. Dr. Sa-ardyen’s research interests cover a wide range of topics including treatment of offenders, access to justice, and linkage between sustainable development and the operation of the criminal justice system.

Dr. Anuwan Vongpichet is Deputy Executive Director, and Acting Director of Office of Justice Innovation, Thailand Institute of Justice (TIJ), where she has conceptualised and managed many justice sector initiatives. She developed the Rule of Law and Development (RoLD) Program, under which, in collaboration with Harvard Law School’s Institute for Global Law and Policy, TIJ conducts workshops for Asian policy leaders. She also pioneered the first justice innovation platform in Thailand – which incubates and scales solutions for the justice sector, using multi-disciplinary tools like design- and systems-thinking. Additionally, for TIJ’s leadership team, Dr. Vongpichet manages external stakeholders, including the World Bank, the Hague Institute for Innovation of Law, Harvard University and Stanford University. She was previously Policy and Plan Analyst, Office of the National Economic and Social Development Council, Prime Minister’s Office of Thailand.

Speaker’s Bio

Innovation Consultant, Thailand Institute of Justice

Arm Tungnirun was a 2017-2018 Residential Fellow at the IGLP, recently received his PhD from Stanford Law School, and is a Vice Dean of the Faculty of Law at Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. He uses qualitative methods and interdisciplinary materials to examine issues of comparative legal cultures, business legal practices in emerging economies, and the relationship between law and economic development. He received his LL.B. from Peking University, Beijing, China, LL.M. in International Economic Law from Harvard Law School, and J.S.M. in Law and Society from Stanford Law School. He is fluent in three languages, and enjoys thinking across the borders of countries, legal traditions, and academic disciplines. For his research, he conducts fieldwork and in-depth interviews to critically explore the emergence of transnational corporate lawyers and their practices in Myanmar, while taking into account comparative perspectives from past scholarship on the globalization of law and the development of the corporate legal sector in other emerging economies such as China and India.

Co-founder and Managing Director, Sal Forest Co.Ltd.

Chanakarn Muangmangkhang (Net) is an Investment Manager in Venture Capital team at SCB 10X, a corporate venture capital arm of the Siam Commercial Bank. Net has an experience in investment, portfolio management and business development. Prior to joining SCB 10X, Net was an M&A Manager at EY and Indorama Ventures. Net holds an MBA from The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University and a BBA in Accounting from Thammasat University.

The Office of Justice Innovation, Thailand Institute of Justice

Jothie Rajah is a full-time appointee to faculty of the ABF. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne, Australia. She was awarded the Law Faculty’s 2010 Harold Luntz Graduate Research Thesis Prize for her work, Legislating Illiberalism: Law, Discourse & Legitimacy in Singapore, which also won the University of Melbourne’s Chancellor’s Prize for Excellence in the PhD Thesis and an Honorable Mention in the Law and Society Association Dissertation Prize competition. 

She is a graduate of the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, where she also graduated with Honours in English. Jothie has taught with the Legal Writing and Research Skills Programme of the Faculty of Law of the National University of Singapore, where she has also lectured on Hindu Legal Traditions. She has also taught with the English departments of the National University of Singapore, the Institute of Education and Open University, Singapore. Jothie has been a member of the consultancy team working on the official translations of Lao laws, a United Nations Development Project. In Melbourne, Jothie has guest lectured in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at the Melbourne Law School. She is a co-ordinator of the Law and Society Association Collaborative Research Network on British Colonial Legalities.

Research focus

The intersections of law, language, and power in the following areas: law, legitimacy and authoritarianism; international organizations and the global public sphere in constructions of norms for the rule of law; and the relationship between law, religion and national identity.