Professors Neil Craik (University of Waterloo) and Anna-Maria Hubert (University of Calgary) are seeking research students to begin in September 2018, including funded PhD, MA and M. Env.students (at University of Waterloo), and funded LL.M. students (at the University of Calgary), and research assistantships for JD students (at the University of Calgary), in connection with an SSHRC funded project, “The International Law of the Commons: Toward a Global Constitutional Framework”.

The project focuses on the law and governance of different global commons regimes as a distinct sub-field of international environmental law. Regimes of particular interest include the deep seabed, the atmospheric commons, outer space, Antarctica and biological diversity, but the project seeks to conduct cross-regime analyses. The framework is directed towards a set of functional questions respecting the allocation of competences within and between international institutions, the presence of fundamental norms, the overall coherence (or lack of it) of a system of global commons law and the manner in which international law may constitute global citizenship and solidarity in the domain of commons management. The project outputs are directed towards both scholarly audiences in international law and global governance, and the national and international policy community that is currently engaged in the development and implementation of international rules respecting the global commons.

Students involved in the project will have broad scope to define research projects within the framework of the project and will gain hands-on experience in translating research into usable public policy outputs and have opportunities to engage in international policy processes.

Students with legal training are strongly preferred, but there are opportunities for students with interests in global environmental governance more generally.

Interested prospective students or students already enrolled at the University of Waterloo or the University of Calgary Faculty of Law should connect with either Neil (ncraik@uwaterloo.ca) or Anna-Maria (annamaria.hubert@ucalgary.ca).

Neil is also interesting in supervising graduate students global governance and environmental policy fields in other areas relating to his current research interests.