cayetana santaolalla montoya

Cayetana Santaolalla Montoya is a legal scholar specialising in the private international law of digital assets: custody, tokenisation, stablecoins and cross-border dispute resolution in blockchain environments. She is tenured Associate Professor of Private International Law at the Public University of Navarre and teaches International Arbitration, in English, in Deusto's MA in International Relations and Business Diplomacy. She is a Fellow of the European Law Institute and a member of the EAPIL Digital Tokens Working Group, whose work is addressed to the Hague Conference on Private International Law. She has submitted consultation responses to the European Commission (MiCA review), the Bank of England, the Dubai Financial Services Authority and UNIDROIT–ICC. Her recent publications include the monograph Digital Asset Custody and Private International Law (Atelier, 2026) and "The Challenges of Blockchain Arbitration from a Private International Law Perspective" (Uniform Law Review, Oxford University Press, 2025). She has held visiting positions at the University of Zurich, the University of Vienna, Dublin City University and UNIDROIT (Rome). She has been principal investigator on five competitively funded research projects, including one for the European Commission. Before joining academia, she spent fifteen years in international trade and finance in New York, Chile and Spain, including with the FAO and the Spanish Commercial Office in New York. She holds a PhD in Law (cum laude) from the University of the Basque Country. ORCID: 0000-0002-2814-7894.

CV