Massimo V. Benedettelli was born in Bari, Italy, on 30 May 1957. He pursued his studies at the Università degli Studi di Bari, where he earned a Laurea in political sciences in 1979 and a Laurea in law in 1984. He then continued his academic training abroad, obtaining an LLM from the University of Pennsylvania School of Law in Philadelphia (1982-1983) and completing a PhD at the European University Institute in Florence (1981-1987).>br/>His academic career has been primarily associated with the Università degli Studi di Bari, where he served as Full Professor of International Law in the Department of Law from 2009 to 2023, having obtained tenure as Associate Professor in 1994. Since 2024, he has been the scientific coordinator of the postgraduate programme on Global Litigation and Arbitration Management at the Department of Law of the Università Statale degli Studi in Milan, and since 2022, he has directed the programme on International Arbitration and Risk Management at SDA (Scuola di Direzione Aziendale) Bocconi in Milan. Over the years, he has taught courses in Public International Law, Private International Law, International Economic Law, EU Law, and European Commercial Law. He has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Europäisches Rechts Akademie in Trier, Germany, and an Associate Faculty Member of EDLE, the European Doctorate in Law and Economics jointly organised by the Universities of Bologna, Hamburg, and Rotterdam.

He also serves on the editorial boards of Rivista dell'arbitrato, Diritto del Commercio Internazionale , and Rivista di diritto societario (interno, internazionale, comunitario e comparator ). In 2026, he will act as General Reporter on "The Application of the Lex Fori : Developments in Practice and Foundations in Theory" at the Twenty-Second General Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law in Berlin. His institutional appointments include membership in the Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), Paris (2018-2024), the ICC Commission on Arbitration and ADR (since 2012), the European and International Affairs Commission of the National Council of Italian Notaries Public (2006-2013), and the board of the Associazione italiana per l'arbitrato. He has also served in several advisory capacities, including as a member of a study group of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the revision of the Italian model bilateral investment treaty; as an expert for the European Commission on the relationship between EU law and Member State law in commercial arbitration prior to the reform of Regulation No. 44/2001; as a contributor to the Assonime (Associazione fra le società italiane per azioni) working group on the impact of EU law on Italian company and financial markets law; and as a consultant to the National Council of Italian Notaries Public, where he drafted a bill to implement the EU X Company Law Directive on cross-border mergers and participated in a study group with the Bank of Italy preparing the Italian report for the 2014 World Bank "Doing Business" project. In the professional sphere, he is a founding partner of ArbLit in Milan (since 2014). Before that, he was a partner at Freshfields (2001-2014) and Chiomenti (1996-2001), and earlier in his career, he served in the legal department of ENI SpA (1986-1990).