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Dr Octavia Cerchez is Professor and Head of Research at Geneva Interdisciplinary Centre for Economics and Law.
Holder of a PhD in Economics and a Master in international and European law, she has more than twenty years experience in formulation and implementation of economic strategies, trade policies and legal developments at international, European, regional and bilateral level.
Dr Cerchez provides consultancy and leads international cooperation projects under the auspices of the European Union, United Nations and Asian Development Bank; counsels and trains government officials and private businesses on legal and economic aspects of European, multilateral and global affairs. She counseled the Romanian Government on accession to the EU and acted as representative to the EU institutions in Brussels; served as negotiator with the EU and counseled the EU Delegation on trade negotiation within World Trade Organization (WTO). She represented Romania to the WTO and other international organizations in Switzerland. She chaired the Committee on Customs Valuation and the Committee on Trade Related Investment Measures of the WTO and coordinated Group D (Eastern European Group) in the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
Dr Cerchez has broad experience in lecturing and conducting research in various institutions in Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Egypt, Germany, Ghana, Israel, Italy, Ivory Coast, Lithuania, Mongolia, Romania, Switzerland, Tajikistan and Qatar, and as a keynote speaker and conference track moderator. She authored nine books and numerous articles published in peer review journals. She lectures in English, French and Romanian and occasionally Russian.