Researcher Summary
Dr Alan D. Hemmings, BSc (Hons) (Cov); PhD (Aukl)
Adjunct Professor
Phone: (+64) (0)27 214 1159, Email: alandhemmings@xtra.co.nz
Dr Alan D. Hemmings is a specialist on Antarctic governance based in North Canterbury, and an Adjunct Professor at Gateway Antarctica, University of Canterbury in Christchurch. His Antarctic operational experience includes time with the British, French and New Zealand national programmes, Greenpeace, and as a Government observer of Antarctic tourism, and multiple visits to various locations around the Antarctic and across the sub-Antarctic. He participated in dozens of Antarctic Treaty System meetings between 1989 and 2010, and has published some 125 articles and chapters, and eight books, addressing Antarctic issues.
His research is orientated around ‘Antarctic Geopolitics’, understood as including both traditional IR geopolitics, and the newer discipline of ‘Critical Geopolitics’. It includes understandings, analyses and critiques of international legal obligations, state practice, normative framings of Antarctic governance including the underlying philosophical-legal norms and doctrines, and the situation of Antarctica (as both place and geopolitical issue) within a transforming contemporary global geopolitics. Thus, his research necessarily attends to the consequences of a diverse range of issues such as anthropogenic climate change, trends in technology, shifts in global and regional power (including, but not limited to, the ‘Rise of China’ / ‘Decline of The West’ rubrics) and the roles of science. Particular areas of attention are: ‘Antarctic Territorial Sovereignty’, ‘Nationalism in Antarctica’, ‘Antarctic Securitization’ and ‘COVID-19 and Antarctica’.
