Mazyar Ahmad will hold his trial lecture and defend his PhD thesis in Law.
Trial Lecture
The trial lecture will start at 12:15 on the prescribed subject:
"Today, corporate and national exploration of deep seabed mining beyond national jurisdiction is escalating. What contemporary international legal, regulatory, and institutional developments govern such mining? Do current laws and institutions provide a fair and balanced assessment of the economic, ecological, and social stakes involved? If not, how would you propose addressing any legal and institutional shortcomings?"
At 13:30, Mr. Ahmad will defend his PhD thesis, titled:
First opponent: Professor Sarah Nouwen, University of Cambridge
Second opponent: Law and Political Economy Faculty Fellow, Dr. Usha Natarajan, Yale Law School
Leader of the committee: Associate Professor Jan Solski, UiT The Arctic University of Norway
The public defence will be led by the Dean of the Faculty of Law at UiT, Professor Tore Henriksen.
Seabed mining was initially envisioned as a means for developing states to address the economic legacies of colonialism and achieve a more equitable global order, with the seabed framed as the ‘common heritage of mankind’ in the 1967 speech by Arvid Pardo and later incorporated into the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982. This vision aimed to ensure that the benefits of seabed resources would be shared equitably, especially with developing nations, through the establishment of the dedicated International Organisation namely, the International Seabed Authority. However, the 1994 Agreement on the Implementation of Part XI of UNCLOS significantly shifted the seabed regime towards neoliberal, market-driven principles, undermining the equitable distribution of benefits and allowing powerful States and multinational corporations to dominate seabed mining.
This thesis examines the shift in the seabed regime as a missed opportunity for developing States, investigating how international law can be leveraged by these states to challenge or resist hegemonic power within the global system. Drawing on Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, it analyses the mechanisms employed by developing states to assert counterhegemonic actions, as well as those used by developed States to thwart such efforts. Central to this analysis is the term ‘mankind,’ which plays a pivotal role in the seabed regime and is uniquely treated within international legal discourse, making it a key focus of this research.
This study employs discourse analysis to examine how the term ‘mankind’ is used within the seabed regime, exploring what it denotes and how its deployment effected the seabed discourse. By doing so, the study highlights the role of international legal discourse in shaping power dynamics within the global system and how it influences the interactions between States.
The trial lecture and the public defence will be available via streaming. The stream links are listed below.
Number of sections: 2
Section 1:
25.08.2025 12:15 - 13:15 (duration: 01:00)
Streaming link
Section 2:
25.08.2025 13:30 - 18:00 (duration: 04:30)
