If you have a question about maritime delimitation, don’t shelf it – just take it to Ekaterina Antsygina.
The Fullbright Scholar is currently completing her PhD in Law at Queen’s, and her research focuses on delimitation of continental shelves – which essentially looks at sovereign rights of states for this maritime zone.
Ekaterina began her PhD at Queen’s two years ago to pursue the topic of extended continental shelves after a student at a Colombian university where she was teaching asked her about a long-standing dispute between Nicaragua and Colombia. Since then, she has travelled around the world and had the opportunity to study other troubled waterways.
“During a recent summer program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, I was completing a comparative study of the Arctic Ocean and the South China Sea because there are overlapping continental shelf claims in both cases,” she says. “But the situation is very different from the Arctic because in the Arctic all the states cooperate on delineation and future delimitation…in the South China Sea it's more hostile.”
She also had the opportunity to complete an exchange in Norway at the Scandinavian Institute of Maritime Law to research on the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. Later this year, she will be completing an internship with the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, and hopes to head to Australia to research with a leading expert on the law of the sea.
While Ekaterina brings plenty of international experience with her, she says she finds Kingston is the perfect environment for research.
“I have mainly lived in big cities like Moscow and Bogotá, and while Kingston is not that big it's the perfect place for research because I can concentrate on my writing,” she says. “I can also take advantage of resources like the Isabel Bader Centre – I just recently went to see this famous Korean pianist, and there are always lots of different artists coming through.”
After experiencing many other institutions during her travels, she still has high praise for Queen’s.
“I like courses here and the quality of the professors,” she says. “And if someone wants to have fun, there’s lots to see…if you have time for it during your studies!”
To learn more about Ekaterina, visit the Faculty of Law website.