Maria José AZAR-BAUD is an Associate Professor (maître de conférences) at the University of Paris-Saclay, and lecturer at several International Universities, such as Panthéon-Sorbonne and Paris-Panthéon-Assas universities and, in the past, business schools (ESCP). She has a double PhD (Panthéon-Sorbonne and Buenos Aires Universities) focusing on Collective redress in Consumer Law, under a Comparative Law perspective, which was published in French by Dalloz, in 2013. Maria José has written more than 80 papers in Spanish, French and English and is one of the main authors of a Study on the State of play of Collective redress in Europe, requested by the European Parliament in 2018. At University, she co-chairs the Paris-Saclay Legal Clinics, and is the head of the Observatory of Group Actions and other forms of Collective Redress, that she founded in 2017.

Aside from lecturing and training, Maria José acts as an independent counsel on Management of Mass Disputes and seats at the Executive Board of two European non-profit organizations seeking, as plaintiffs, to grant access to justice on a collective scale. She has been heard as expert at the French Senate and Assembly, several Ministries as well as in the European Parliament on representative and group actions Drafts. As a former lawyer at the Bar of Buenos Aires, she has dealt with collective actions, both plaintiff and defendant side, in leading collective cases in Argentina.