Prof. Alan Uzelac is a full professor with tenure employed at the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb. He was born on 15 June1963 in Zagreb. Having finished the Classical Grammar School, he studied at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb, where he graduated in law on 15 December 1988. He also studied philosophy and comparative literature at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, where he graduated on 1 March 1990. During his studies, he spent the academic year 1986/87 as a visiting student at the Johannes Guttenberg University in Mainz, studying political science, literature and philosophy.  He was a scholarship holder of the government of the German state of Rheinland-Pfalz.

After completing his studies, he was employed as an associate expert at the Faculty of Law in Rijeka, where he worked from February 1989 to October 1991, participating in teaching at the Department of Theory of the State and Law and at the Department of Civil Procedure. From 1 November 1991 to 31 October 1994, he worked as a junior research assistant at the Faculty of Political Sciences, participating in a Rule of Law project and in the work of the Department Introduction to Law. He enrolled in postgraduate studies in civil law sciences in Belgrade in 1988, and continued his studies in Zagreb from 1991. He obtained his master’s degree on 2 July, 1992, defending his thesis on the topic “Truth in court proceedings”. In parallel, after a period of practice at the Zagreb Municipal and District Court (from 1990 to 1992), he took the bar exam (21 December 1992). Since 1 November 1994, he has been working at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb, first as an assistant, then as an assistant professor (since 1 July 1999), associate professor (since 18 December 2002) full professor (since 16 January 2007). and full professor with tenure (since 17 January 2012). From 2000 to 2006, he taught also at the Faculty of Law at the University of Osijek. He improved scientifically during two-month study stays at the Faculty of Law at the University of Vienna (in 1992 and 1995) as a scholarship holder of the Austrian government. From February to October 1996, he stayed as a visiting researcher in the United States at Harvard Law School, for which he received a Fulbright scholarship from the American government. He defended his doctoral dissertation “Burden of Proof” on 4 January 1999. He also improved his skills at multi-week postgraduate seminars in Dubrovnik within the framework of IUC, and in Budapest (Raising Rights Consciousness seminars). In May 1994, he stayed in Paris for professional training at the International Court of Arbitration at the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Paris.

He has participated as a researcher and/or leader in several scientific and professional projects in Croatia and other countries. He has taught as a guest lecturer at several universities in Croatia, Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa, and presented at about a hundred conferences in the country and abroad. He is a member of the International Association for Procedural Law (IAPL) and the Association for International Procedural Law (Vereinigung für internationales Verfahrenrechts). He has been a member of the scientific councils of both organisations since 2007, and he was elected an honorary member of the IAPL Council in 2019.

From 1992 to 2002, he was the secretary of the Permanent Selected Court at the Croatian Chamber of Commerce, where he was one of the founders and editors of the Croatian Arbitration Yearbook and the international conference Croatian Arbitration Days. From 1993 to 2010, he participated in the work of the UNCITRAL Arbitration and Conciliation Group (since 2000 as a representative of the Republic of Croatia). He was arbitrator in many international and domestic cases, and has collaborated with several renowned arbitration institutions (ICA-ICC, LCIA, VIAC etc.).

From 2001 to 2002, he was the delegate of the Republic of Croatia in the Committee of Experts of the Council of Europe for Judicial Efficiency (CJ-EJ), where as a member of the working group he worked on the resolution that established the European Commission for Judicial Efficiency (CEPEJ) in early 2003. After its establishment, as a Croatian member of CEPEJ (2003 – 2007), he was elected as a member of the Board of Directors of that organization for two terms (03/04 and 05/06). From 2005 to 2006, he led the working group for the duration of court proceedings at CEPEJ (TF-DEL), after which he became a member of the SATURN Center’s Groupe de pilotage (Centre for monitoring the duration of court proceedings). He participated as an expert in several projects related to judicial reforms in various countries in cooperation with various organizations (Council of Europe, European Union, World Bank, EBRD, IDLO, USAID, CEELI, UNHCR, OSCE, UNIDROIT, ELI, UIHJ and others).

From 2001 to 2015, he was a member of the Commission for the .hr domain of CARNET. He also participated in the work of the National Council for Competitiveness, and is a member of the Scientific Council of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts for Justice, Administration and Local Self-Government, within which he has organized or participated in a dozen round tables. He has taken part in the drafting of many laws and regulations in the field of civil litigation law, arbitration, alternative dispute resolution and the operation of judicial authorities. At the University of Zagreb, he was the president of the working group that shaped the current text of the University’s Code of Ethics (2007).