His second wife, Professor Charlotte Wälde, has served as co-director of the AHRC Centre on Intellectual Property Law at Edinburgh University.
He did his professional legal training in Frankfurt (including as an intern at the UN Centre on Transnational Corporations in New York) and obtained his "Assessor" grade there.
Detlev Vagts was his academic mentor and teacher at Harvard Law School; he also worked as research assistant for the late Professor and ICJ Judge Richard Baxter.
ICJ president Roslyn Higgins had served as an academic mentor for Thomas Wälde since he moved from the United Nations in New York to the University of Dundee, Scotland in 1991.
Wälde started in 1980 as UN interregional adviser on mineral law - with the remit to provide rapid ad hoc advisory services to developing country governments throughout the world.
Following his directorship of CEPMLP/Dundee, Wälde developed academic and professional expertise in international dispute resolution, both mediation and arbitration for large, complex, cross-border transnational disputes, primarily (but not exclusively) in the field of oil, gas, energy, infrastructure and mining (but also gaming and private equity) based on contract and investment treaties.
He frequently acts as expert witness and (expert) co-counsel in international arbitrations relating to oil, gas, energy, mining and infrastructure, including Glamis v US, Duke v Peru, Nykomb v Latvia plus commercial, BIT, ECT and NAFTA-based arbitrations under UNCITRAL, ICSID, NAFTA and CAFTA procedural rules.
Frequent speaker and author on international investment law, natural resources, mineral, energy and oil and gas law, including renegotiation, taxation, indirect expropriation, de-commissioning (abandonment) of offshore operations; state enterprise privatisation, investment treaties, environmental regulation; arbitration; Energy Charter Treaty.
He developed and led negotiation assistance inter alia in several investment projects related to coal (Colombia), gold (Mali), Guyana (uranium), Dominican Republic (nickel, oil), Cayman Islands (oil) – all led to completed transaction.