Job description

Dr Jessica N.M. Schechinger is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Norwegian Centre for the Law of the Sea (NCLOS) at the UiT-The Arctic University of Norway, Faculty of Law. At the UiT Faculty of Law, she is a member of NCLOS, and the Research Group for Human Rights and International Law. She is also a member of the International Law Association (ILA) Committee on Protection of People at Sea, and a member of the European Cooperation in Science & Technology (COST) Action CA23103 - Life, liberty and health: ensuring universal protection of human rights at sea (BlueRights), for which she is also the Science Communication Coordinator. She was a co-convenor of the European Society of International Law Interest Group on the Law of the Sea from 2018 until 2024.

Her main expertise and research interests are in the areas of public international law, international law of the sea, and international human rights law. Currently, she is mostly working on the protection of persons at sea/human rights at sea (she is, for example, working on her forthcoming monograph on the regulation of privately contracted armed security personnel (PCASP) operating at sea); and maritime security issues (including piracy and environmental and maritime security issues in the Arctic/High North).

Jessica previously worked as a lecturer in international law at the University of Glasgow School of Law, at the Glasgow Centre for International Law and Security (GCILS). Before her time in Glasgow, she worked at the University of Amsterdam, and Utrecht University/the Netherlands Institute for the Law of the Sea (NILOS).

She has convened and taught in a variety of international law courses on the LLB and the LLM/MSc level. She has also given presentations and provided guest lectures/training sessions for institutions in France, Germany, Ghana, Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. She has also taught pupils as part of a Widening Participation Programme in Scotland.

Jessica obtained her PhD in international law from the University of Glasgow (which was sponsored by a full University of Glasgow College of Social Sciences scholarship), and holds and LLB and an LLM (public international law), both from Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She also has a Diploma from the Rhodes Academy of Oceans Law and Policy.

LinkedIn | X (Twitter) | Bluesky | ORCiD | Science Communication Coordinator of COST Action CA23103 ‘BlueRights’ | Media Officer of the ILA Committee on Protection of People at Sea.