Gastforscher:innen

Alessandra Accogli is a visiting researcher from University College Dublin, Sutherland School of Law, where she recently submitted her doctoral thesis on the legal protection of carbon sinks. Specifically, her work lies at the intersection of climate change law, environmental law and human rights law. With the help of a case study on peatlands in Ireland, she investigates the tensions and synergies between protecting and restoring peatlands as important carbon sinks in Ireland and respecting the human rights of local people who depend on the ecosystem for their livelihoods and/or culture.

During the three-month research stay as a 2024 Climate Change Fellow at the University of Graz, Alessandra will be involved in a number of ongoing activities at the Research Center ClimLaw: Graz. In particular, she will work under the guidance of Prof Oliver Ruppel on a joint publication that aims to investigate how the findings of Alessandra’s doctoral thesis – which promote integrating a human rights lens into legal measures on ecosystem protection and restoration – can serve as a general framework for analysing the tensions between global demands for carbon sink protection and local realities, thereby allowing for application in diverse contexts. She will also hold two sessions as part of the Lecture series on “International Climate Change Law, Policy and Litigation”.

Willem Odendaal obtained his PhD in Law from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland in January 2023. He is an admitted legal practitioner in the High and Supreme Courts of Namibia. He was the project coordinator of the Land, Environment and Development project at the Legal Assistance Centre (LAC), Namibia’s only public interest law firm from 2006 until December 2019. Willem has conducted extensive socio-legal research on topics such as the Namibian Land Reform Programme, mining, climate change, the Community Based Natural Resources Management Programme (CBNRM) and Indigenous Peoples’ land and environmental rights. Willem has also done comparative research on post resettlement support in Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. He also has research experience in Kenya, Uganda, Cameroon and Ghana. He is currently setting up a new public interest law firm in Namibia, to continue supporting the human, land and environmental rights of the people of Namibia.

Ms. Luna is a lawyer and PhD candidate in Political Economy at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) at the University of Coimbra. She specialises in "Public Policies, Social and Collective Rights" and has MA in Regional Economics and Public Policy (UESC), Brazil. She has been a Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology PhD fellow (2023-2027). Her research interests relate to studies about the Right to the City and public policies for urban development focused on formal settlements by encompassing social and economic indicators to improve local public policies. Currently, her PhD research involves urban informality and the climate crisis from the perspective of mitigation of the consequences of climate change through the lens of social justice in two medium-sized Brazilian cities. The research aims to use multi-level governance concepts and law regulation to discuss policymakers' responsibilities to manage and evaluate measures to face the vulnerabilities of risk areas within the context of climate change.