About
I am an international relations scholar specialising in environmental governance, with a sustained focus on the polar regions. My research examines how international institutions operate in contexts of contested authority, environmental protection, and commercial pressure, with particular attention to Antarctica and the Arctic.
Across my work, I am interested in how norms, authority, and democratic legitimacy are constructed and maintained in complex governance settings.
This work introduced me to the practical and conceptual challenges of international governance, including the limits of legal authority, the fragmentation of institutional responsibility, and the gap between normative commitments and their implementation.
My earliest research engagement focused on questions of institutional responsibility and protection in contexts of vulnerability. As a research assistant, I worked on projects mapping the international institutions and normative frameworks designed to protect internally displaced people (IDPs).
These interests were subsequently developed during my Master of Research in Sociology, where I conducted an in-depth study of the integration of religious minorities in liberal democracies, using France as a case study.
Together, these projects strengthened my interest in the structural foundations of nation-states, the formation of political communities, and the conditions under which authority is perceived as legitimate.
They also provided an early foundation for my later work on sovereignty and governance beyond the nation-state.
This research examined how national identity, secularism, and state institutions mediate inclusion and exclusion, and how normative principles are translated into legal and administrative practice.
SWITCH (or Sustainable Water Management Improves Tomorrow’s Cities’ Health), was an international research initiative on sustainable water management. I engaged with cross-sector research networks and contributed to public-facing outputs, including the production of a documentary film to communicate outputs beyond academic audiences.
From 2011 onwards, my research agenda became increasingly oriented towards environmental governance. Participation in a fieldwork in Antarctica introduced me to the institutional and diplomatic specificities of the Antarctic Treaty System, a governance framework that operates without settled sovereignty yet sustains cooperation among diverse actors.
This experience became central to my doctoral research, which analysed how authority, territoriality, and consensus function within Antarctic governance, and how these dynamics differ from those found in other international regimes.
Alongside academic research, I have developed long-standing engagement with policy and practitioner communities. I have worked with and within the Antarctic Treaty System in multiple capacities, including as a member of national delegations, as an intern at the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, and as an advisor supporting Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings.
These roles have given me first-hand insight into international negotiations, institutional practice, and the translation of legal, scientific, and normative expertise into collective decision-making.
After completing my Masters, I was involved in applied research projects that exposed me to the practical dynamics of participatory democracy. This included work on the SWITCH project.
My subsequent research, including two Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowships, has built on this foundation to examine contemporary governance challenges in the polar regions. These include the regulation of tourism growth, marine environmental protection, emergency response, and liability regimes within complex international institutional settings.
Across these projects, I combine documentary analysis, interviews, and comparative qualitative methods to understand how environmental governance operates in practice at the interface of diplomacy, science, industry, and public policy.