Guest Seminar with Dr. Ekaterina Antsygina

18 May 2025

1pm – 2pm Deakin Burwood Campus

On January 8, 2025, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump questioned Denmark’s legal rights to Greenland, stating, “people don’t really know if Denmark has any legal rights to [Greenland].” While the specific concerns behind his remarks remain unclear, they likely touch on two interrelated issues: Denmark’s historical establishment of sovereignty over Greenland, despite limited effective occupation initially, and the Greenlandic people’s right to self-determination. This talk, based on Dr. Antsygina’s blog post published at EJIL:Talk!, will explore the legal foundations of Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland, including historical legal developments, Denmark’s continuous authority, and international recognition by other states, including the United States. It will also address the Greenlandic people recognized right to self-determination, potential legal and political challenges should it pursue independence, and the implications of such a move, including military considerations, Arctic governance responsibilities, and maritime delimitation in the Central Arctic Ocean.

Ekaterina Antsygina

Dr. Ekaterina Antsygina is a visiting scholar at the Institute for International Law and the Humanities at Melbourne Law School. She previously served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Law, University of Hamburg (2021–2024), where she conducted research on ocean governance and the protection of the marine environment. Dr. Antsygina will soon join the Norwegian Centre for the Law of the Sea (UiT) as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow. Her research interests include the law of the sea, public international law, and international environmental law, with a particular focus on their practical application.

Dr. Antsygina holds a Ph.D. in public international law from Queen’s University, Canada (2021). Her doctoral research addressed delimitation scenarios for overlapping extended continental shelves of Canada, Denmark, and Russia in the Arctic Ocean. During her Ph.D. studies, she conducted research at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law, the Scandinavian Institute of Maritime Law, and The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. She also interned at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.

In 2022, Dr. Antsygina co-organized the international workshop, “Dynamics of the Constitution for the Oceans: UNCLOS at 40,” together with Professor Alexander Proelss and ITLOS Vice-President Tomas Heidar. Dr. Antsygina is licensed to practice law in Russia and the State of New York.

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