Affiliated researchers

Alessandra is a UCD Ad Astra PhD Candidate at the Sutherland School of Law. Her research focuses on climate change and its intersections with biodiversity and ecosystem protection as well as human rights. The aim of her research is to find ways to enhance the legal response to climate change, in particular by adopting a more ecological perspective. Alessandra holds an LLM in Public International Law from Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). She also completed one-year Master’s degree in Political Science at ULB and a Second cycle Master’s degree in Law at the Università del Salento (UniSalento). She speaks Italian, English and French.
Alessandra Accogli
Alessandra Accogli
Irene is an IRC Government of Ireland PhD scholar and NUI Travelling Doctoral Scholarship recipient at the UCD School of Archaeology (World Heritage). Her research focuses on the importance of indigenous-led conservation of World Heritage, how indigenous peoples in Canada are challenging international heritage law in order to protect their collective land and cultural landscape. Irene holds degrees in Sociology and Geography and a Masters in Sociology and Social Research from UCD. Her publications include Untangling the Concept of Cultural Landscapes: A critical Review (Advances in Cultural Heritage Studies, Mazu Press, 2020) and 'Coloniality, Natural World Heritage and Indigenous Peoples: A Critical Analysis of World Heritage Cultural Governance.' In: Albert, M-T and Cave, C. (Eds) 50 Years World Heritage Convention: Shared Responsibility - Conflict and Reconciliation (Springer Nature, 2022).
Irene Fogarty
Irene Fogarty
V’cenza Cirefice is a researcher, artist and activist working across environmental, climate and gender justice from a feminist and decolonial perspective. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Galway exploring resistance to extractivism in the Sperrin Mountains, North of Ireland through a feminist political ecology lens. She uses creative visual and activist-researcher participatory methods. She is part of CAIM, communities against the injustice of mining, an all island network of communities resisting mining in Ireland, Making Relatives (a collective of Water Protectors in Ireland and Americas) and has worked with the Extracting Us collective.
V’cenza Cirefice
V’cenza Cirefice

Dr Emma Nyhan is a Research Fellow at the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) at the Australian National University (ANU). Emma is an interdisciplinary scholar of law and society, whose work bridges international law, legal and social anthropology, legal geography, and post-colonial studies. Specifically, her research focuses on the in situ study of practices, procedures, institutions and concepts within and across normative legal orders.

Emma’s research has been published in the European Journal of International Law, the International Journal of Law in Context, the Journal of International Dispute Settlement, the Melbourne Journal of International Law and Transnational Legal Theory. Her research has been supported by the Council for British Research in the Levant, Melbourne Law School, the Socio-Legal Studies Association, and the Transnational Law Institute at King’s College London.

Emma has a PhD and a Master of Laws in Comparative, European and International Laws from the European University Institute, Italy. She holds a Master of Laws in Private Law from Universität Konstanz, Germany. She has a Bachelor of Laws (minor in German) from University College Cork, Ireland. Emma is a qualified barrister at the Bar of Ireland. Emma spent a number of years engaged in law and research centres in Europe, the Middle East and North America.

Emma Nyhan
Emma Nyhan