Profile

Assistant Professor, Centre for Blue Governance.

Nelson's academic domain is the International Law of the Sea, focusing on environmental rules and standards applicable to the maritime transport sector. He is interested in studying interactions between sovereign states, global and regional geopolitical conflicts and questions of territoriality, boundaries and space in the ocean. His postdoctoral experience led him to also become a policy and governance arrangement analyst. In research projects he is usually the lawyer in a team of marine scientists and naval engineers, providing insights on jurisdiction.

The Centre for Blue Governance is a multidisciplinary social science research group focused on the interactions between people and the sea. Accordingly, we define blue governance as the formal and informal processes of collective decision-making, planning, deliberating, and capacity building by governmental, market, and civil society actors connected to marine and coastal environments. Through addressing issues of legitimacy, democracy, and sustainability in governance, we seek to improve understanding of the strategies used by people in response to social, economic, environmental, and political change. The Centre for Blue Governance is located at Aalborg University, Denmark, within the Department of Sustainability and Planning.