University of Utah S.J. Quinney College James I. Farr Presidential Endowed Professor of Law Robin Kundis Craig received an Academic Writing Residency Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation. The opportunity allowed Craig to spend four weeks working on a new scholarship project at its Bellagio Center facility on Lake Como, Italy. Craig was in residency with 11 other fellows from all over the world, including artists and scholars from a variety of disciplines. Fellows work on research initiatives during the day and gather as a group at night for presentations, dinner, and conversation.
Craig used the opportunity to start a new project on “Re-Valuing the Ocean.” “I am seeking to articulate ways in which law and policy can begin to articulate the ocean’s value as a functional set of ecosystems and global processes essential to planetary life support and coping with climate change, rather than as a source of a series of discrete and unconnected goods (fish and shellfish, oil, natural gas, minerals, etc.),” said Craig.
“I’ll be using my growing grounding in resilience theory and earth systems sciences, including oceanography and marine biology, to critique many forms of current marine law and regulation, offering what I consider necessary reforms for the Anthropocene. This project will also eventually dovetail with other work I am doing on “Native Peoples and the Sea,” which seeks to legally recognize and respect indigenous rights to and traditional knowledge of marine resources as well as their marine cultural heritage,” she said.