Monthly Archives: October 2022

Rebbeca Pskowski

WMU-Koji Sekimizu PhD Fellow in Maritime Governance

Rebecca P. Pskowski is a WMU-Koji Sekimizu Fellow in Maritime Governance, pursuing her PhD at WMU with the support of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore. She is also civilian attorney-advisor to the United States Coast Guard (on leave).

Rebecca received her B.A. from the University of Chicago, her J.D. from Harvard Law School, and her LL.M. in Admiralty from Tulane University Law School. She clerked for the Honorable Charles S. Haight, Jr. of the Southern District of New York and was a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of Labor.

Prior to her legal career, Rebecca sailed as a merchant mariner for nine years. Her work on passenger sailing vessels took her to five continents and included service as cook, AB, bosun, deck officer, and relief captain. She is licensed as a mate of vessels less than 3000 gross tons on oceans, and a master of vessels less than 500 gross tons on coastal waters.

Rebecca is writing her dissertation on the ongoing development of institutional compliance mechanisms for IMO treaties. Specifically, she is researching the development of the STCW 95 list of confirmed parties, the London Protocol Compliance Group, the IMO Member State Audit Scheme, and the IMO data collection system for fuel consumption of ships.

Rebecca has published widely on maritime legal topics, including articles on ship recycling, bunker contamination claims, and maritime labor protections.

Suzanne Agius

Head of Policy and Permitting, Environment and Climate Change Canada
Government of Canada

Suzanne Agius is the current Head of Policy and Permitting in the Marine Programs Division of Environment and Climate Change Canada. Having studied marine ecotoxicology and law, she now has nearly 20 years of experience with disposal at sea permitting and monitoring. She has attended London Protocol and Convention Meetings as a Canadian delegate for several years, and has served as a member of the London Protocol Compliance Group since 2016.

Flavia Destro

Senior Secretary
WMU-Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute

Flavia Destro is the Senior Secretary at the WMU-Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute where she supports with the administrative services to the Director, the Head of Research and Research Officers.

Flavia holds a BA. In Social Communications from FAAP – Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado, in Brazil where she has studied a range of interdisciplinary subjects including linguistics, visual communication, history of art and more. Flavia moved to Sweden via Ireland, where she spent fifteen happy years. She joined WMU in 2019 as Assistant to the Vice-President (Academic Affairs) and worked as project coordinator in a number of high profile projects in partnership with the European Maritime Safety Agency.

This year, Flavia joined the WMU-Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute bringing several years of work experience in multi-national companies as well as higher education institutions in Sweden and abroad.

Maia Brindley Nilsson

Communications and Conference Officer
World Maritime University (WMU)

Maia joined WMU in May of 2012 as the Communications Officer. Her background includes education in architecture, historic preservation, and interior design combined with several years of work experience in design offices and higher education.

As a designer, Maia worked at the renowned preservation firm of Ann Beha Architects in Boston. Her project involvement mainly included design and production for civic and university clients. Prior to joining WMU she was the Head of Continuing Education at the Boston Architectural College where her role included marketing, management, curriculum development, faculty hiring and oversight, student advising, teaching, and oversight of the departmental budget.

At WMU, Maia is responsible for multimedia efforts to publicize priority issues and major events for the University via the press, website, social media, publications and film. She also leads the planning and organization of international conferences and high-level events for the University.

Flora Lim

Secretary
WMU-Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute

Ms. Flora Lim joined the WMU-Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute in May 2021 as a Secretary. Her primary responsibilities include providing secretarial support to the Director and the Head of Research and handling administrative and procurement duties for multiple PhD programmes and research projects for the Institute. Flora holds a MSc. in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science at Lund University (LUMES) in Sweden. The programme places a strong emphasis on an interdisciplinary approach to sustainability issues of which Flora develops a keen passion towards urban sustainability and community engagement.

Dorothee Seybold

Carlo-Schmid-Program Fellow
WMU-Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute

Dorothee Seybold completed her Master’s degree in Development Economics with a specialization in quantitative methods and environmental economics. At WMU, she will primarily work on the Closing the Circle project, which explores challenges and potential solutions to marine debris, sargassum, and marine spatial planning in the Eastern Caribbean, as well as assist with project engagement and implementation.

Prior to joining WMU, Dorothee Seybold worked as a student assistant at various German research institutes, including GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, and as an intern abroad in the field of international cooperation on climate change adaptation.

Mercedes Troisi Allende

Project and Operations Support Fellow
WMU-Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute

Mercedes Troisi Allende is Project and Operations Support Fellow at the WMU-Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute. She provides operational, financial and administrative support to the Institute’s programmes and to its events, trainings and capacity building activities under the WMU Ocean Research Agenda. Prior to joining WMU in April 2021, Mercedes worked in the private Finance and Consulting sector, where she worked as a Client Financial Management Analyst and a Business Intelligence Analyst. She holds a degree in Economics from the University of Buenos Aires (Magna Cum Laude) and a MSc in International Relations from the University of Glasgow (with Merit).

Sara Seck

Associate Professor
Dalhousie University

Dr Sara L Seck is an Associate Professor and the Yogis & Keddy Chair in Human Rights Law at the Schulich School of Law and Marine & Environmental Law Institute, Dalhousie University.

Her research and teaching explore human rights-based approaches to local, transnational, and global environmental challenges, including business & human rights, plastic pollution, and the oceans-climate nexus. Recent co-edited books are (with Meinhard Doelle) the 2021 Research Handbook on Climate Change Loss & Damage (Edward Elgar) and (with Sumudu Atapattu and Carmen Gonzalez) the 2021 Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Justice and Sustainable Development.

In 2019 she received a legal specialist award in Peace, Justice and Governance from the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law. In 2021, she joined the editorial team of the Ocean Yearbook.

Mariamalia Rodríguez Chaves

Postdoctoral Fellow
WMU-Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute

Dr. Rodríguez Chaves has more than fifteen years of experience working with environmental non-governmental organizations and as an independent consultant on diverse environmental topics. She has a Law Degree, and a Masters Degree in Environmental Law, from the University of Costa Rica; and a PhD in Law from the School of Law of the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG). Currently, Mariamalia is a Post-Doctoral Fellow researcher in the Empowering Women for the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development programme at the WMU-Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute; a consultant for the High Seas Alliance, where she is responsible for coordinating the approach of Latin American countries in negotiating a new treaty on biodiversity beyond national negotiations at the United Nations; and she is the programme coordinator of the DOALOS/Norway programmes of assistance to meet the strategic capacity needs of developing states in the field of ocean governance and the law of the sea.