Veronica Dossah, is a research associate at the Marine & Environmental Law Institute, Dalhousie University. She recently completed a Master of Laws program at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University. She undertakes research projects on issues relating to business, human rights and the environment; the extractive industries; gender and; marine plastic pollution.

Veronica is also a teaching assistant at the Schulich School of law, Dalhousie University.

She has been called to the Ghanaian Bar and practices law in areas including corporate-commercial law litigation and advisory services, and alternative dispute resolution.

Cecilia Engler, LLM, is a PhD Candidate at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University and a Research Fellow with the Marine & Environmental Law Institute. Her doctoral thesis work addresses aquaculture governance in the context of the ecosystem approach. Her research interests include the law of the sea, international fisheries, the oceans and climate change regime, the ecosystem approach to oceans management, and ecological law.

She held a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, 2012-2015; an honorary Izaak Walton Killam Predoctoral Scholarship, 2012-2013; and an Izaak Walton Killam Predoctoral Scholarship 2008-2010, and was awarded the Dalhousie University Governor General’s Gold Medal in Humanities and Social Sciences 2011 for her Master of Laws thesis work. She has also been distinguished with several other academic awards both in Canada and Chile.

She graduated as a lawyer from the Universidad de Concepción, Chile. She worked for the Chilean National Fisheries Service and the Undersecretariat for Fisheries and Aquaculture from 1998 to 2008. In that capacity, she worked on policy and regulation development for the fisheries and aquaculture sector and on enforcement of fisheries regulations.

Ted L. McDorman is a Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Before joining the University of Victoria in 1985, Professor McDorman was at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia with the Dalhousie Oceans Studies Program (DOSP). He has been a visiting professor at institutions in Thailand, Sweden, the Netherlands and Canada and has over 120 publications in the areas of ocean law and policy, international trade law and comparative constitutional law.

Since 2000, he has been the editor-in-chief of Ocean Development and International Law. He has undertaken projects for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, including legislative drafting, conducting of workshops and report writing on fisheries and fisheries trade, and written reports on ocean law and policy matters for the governments of Canada, Quebec and British Columbia.

During 2002-2004 and 2011-2013 Professor McDorman was the “Academic-in- Residence” with the Bureau of Legal Affairs of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in Ottawa where he worked on a wide range of ocean law topics including have a small role in the decision and process respecting Canada’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in 2003 and the anticipated Canadian submission of information respecting the outer limits of the continental shelf to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in late 2013.

Unwana Udo is a research associate at the Marine and Environmental Law Institute, Dalhousie University.  He recently completed a Master of Laws program at the Schulich School of Law. His areas of research interests are climate and environmental law including climate change and human rights; climate justice; climate litigation; climate-oceans governance; and sustainable development. Unwana has held teaching assistant positions in several courses at Dalhousie University, including those with environmental protection and sustainability themes. More recently, Unwana has been working on a multi-disciplinary research project (under the auspices of the Ocean Frontier Institute) involving oceans governance, sustainability, climate law and policy, as well as the evolving participatory role of non-state actors (such as Indigenous peoples and youth) in decision-making within the climate and ocean regimes.

Unwana also holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Nigeria. He is admitted to practise law in Nigeria. Having practised law in the dispute resolution and energy law departments of one of the largest law firms in Nigeria, Unwana is experienced in litigation and advisory services. Unwana is currently a candidate for admission to the Law Society of Ontario.

Phillip A. Buhler has been practicing maritime law for over thirty years in the United States, representing shipowners, operators, insurers and other commercial interests in many aspects of maritime casualties, environmental issues and regulatory matters. He is a correspondent for most members of the International Group of P&I Clubs. He also serves as an instructor in international and US civil procedure at the Universitat zu Koeln and has taught courses in maritime law and intermodal transportation at the Universitat Hamburg.

Mr. Buhler has served on the Board of Directors of the Maritime Law Association of the United States and as Chair of its International Organizations, Conventions and Standards Committee, during which time he directed a focus towards emerging Polar shipping issues. He is also active in the Comite Maritime International and serves on its Polar Shipping International Working Group and its Antarctica Sub-Committee.

Since Fall, 2019 Mr. Buhler has been a Ph.D. candidate at Dalhousie University, developing his thesis concerning application of non-prescriptive regulatory options to commercial shipping in the Polar regions. He received his BA from the College of William & Mary, his J.D. from the University of Miami, and his LL.M. (Admiralty) from Tulane University. He is Board Certified in Admiralty Law and International Law by the Florida Bar, and is the author of numerous articles, book chapters and a book on maritime and international law issues.

Brian Flemming CM, QC, DCL, is Counsel to the Atlantic Canada law firm of McInnes Cooper. He is a non-practising member of the Nova Scotia bar and a former member of the Ontario bar.

In recent years, as a Research Fellow of the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute in Calgary, Dr. Flemming has published articles on Arctic issues, the global war on terror, Canada-China relations in the Arctic, the war in Afghanistan and border security issues involving Canada and the U.S. He has also written papers for the School of Public Policy and the Van Horne Institute at the University of Calgary on national transportation issues.

Dr. Flemming was Assistant Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau from 1976 to 1979. After 9/11, the Canadian government made him the first CEO and chairman of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA), Canada’s principal public response to 9-11. In 2005, he was appointed to the federal Advisory Council on National Security. In 2000-1, Dr. Flemming chaired the Canada Transportation Act Review Panel, a statutorily-mandated review of Canada’s transport policies. The report of that Panel—“Vision and Balance”—caused Dr. Flemming to be given the national “Award of Achievement” in 2003.

In the mid-1960s, following graduate studies in England and the Netherlands, Dr. Flemming taught the first graduate course in public international law at Dalhousie’s law school and wrote many peer-reviewed articles for learned publications and international conferences. He was a key figure in the establishment of the Dalhousie Ocean Studies Program (DOSP) in the 1970s. He was founding chairman of the International Centre for Ocean Development, a Crown Corporation headquartered in Halifax in the 1980s.

Dr. Flemming is a former member, vice chairman and interim chairman of The Canada Council and is a former director of the CBC. He is honorary chairman of the Dalhousie Law Alumni Association of Canada, having been its founding chairman in 1983. In 2010, he won the Weldon Award for Unselfish Public Service at Dalhousie’s Schulich School of Law. He is a former chairman of the Board of Governors at University of King’s College. He was the founding chairman of Symphony Nova Scotia and has been on the boards of many local, regional and national not-for-profit organizations. He was awarded an honourary degree by Saint Mary's in 2014, given an honourary degree by King’s in 1991 and, in 1989, was made a Member of the Order of Canada.

Professor Edgar Gold, CM, AM, QC, grew up and went to sea in Australia but settled in Halifax, Canada, in the early 1960s. He is a former senior partner with the law firm Ritch Durnford in Halifax, where he specialized in maritime,
energy and environmental law and international commercial law. He was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1995. He also served as the Honorary Consul of the Federal Republic of Germany for Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, 1986-1998. He is a former President of the Canadian Maritime Law Association and a Titulary Member of the Comité Maritime International. Dr. Gold is a Master Mariner (UK and Canada) and served at sea for 16 years, including several years in command. He was Professor of Law (1975-1994) and Professor of Resource and Environmental Studies (1986-1994) at Dalhousie University, Halifax. He is a founding member of Dalhousie Law School’s Marine and Environmental Law Institute (formerly MELP).

Professor Gold was a founder and former Executive Director of the Dalhousie Oceans Studies Programme (DOSP), and the International Institute for Transportation and Ocean Policy Studies (IITOPS), the predecessors of the International Oceans Institute of Canada. He was a member of the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board 1996-2003, and a member of the Roster of Experts of the Asian Development Bank, Manila, Philippines, 2001-2004. He is also a former Adjunct Professor and former Canadian Member of the Board of Governors of the World Maritime University, Malmö, Sweden, and a former member of the Governing Board of the IMO-International Maritime Law Institute, Malta. Until the end of 2010 he also held an appointment as Adjunct Professor at the T.C. Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, where was involved with the School’s Marine and Shipping Law Unit. Professor Gold has active experience in most regions of the world and has completed over 250 publications in the maritime law and policy field. He has received honorary degrees from the Canadian Coast Guard College (1992) and the World Maritime University (2007), and was awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit by the German Government in 1997; the Order of Canada (C.M.) in 1997, and the Order of Australia (A.M.) in 2005. In 2012 he was honoured with the presentation of a ‘Festschrift’ entitled The Regulation of International Shipping: International and Comparative Perspectives—Essays in Honour of Edgar Gold. Professor Gold is now based in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

Professor Arthur J. Hanson, OC, is a Distinguished Fellow and former President of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). He was a Professor and Director of the School for Resource and Environmental Studies at Dalhousie University. Prior to that, during the mid-1970s, he worked with the Ford Foundation in Indonesia. Dr. Hanson addresses environment and economy, biodiversity, oceans, and international development concerns globally, in Asia and in Canada. He was one of the founders of the Dalhousie Ocean Studies Programme (DOSP) in the 1970s.

He has served on Canada’s National Round Table on the Environment and Economy (NRTEE), as Canada’s Ministerial Ocean Ambassador with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and in a number of other national advisory posts. He has initiated several major international development activities in Southeast Asia, and currently is a Member and Lead Expert of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED). He is chairing a Working Party on Biotechnology, Sustainable Development and Canada’s Future Economy for the Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee. Dr. Hanson is a member of the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), and a Mentor with the Trudeau Foundation. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Professor Hugh Kindred, who joined the Law School as a faculty member in 1971, continues to research and write in the fields of ocean transportation, overseas trade and international law, as well as to assist with the supervision and examination of LLM and PhD students. He is a member of the bars of Nova Scotia and England as well as a past Chair of the Carriage of Goods Committee of the Canadian Maritime Law Association. He was appointed Senior Legal Officer in the Shipping Division of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva for 1985-86, and he was the Director of the Marine and Environmental Law Program (MELP) at the Law School during 1996-97 and again in 2001. In 1998 he went as Visiting Professor of maritime law to the University of Sydney, Australia.

Hugh is a member of the editorial boards of the Ocean Yearbook and the Canadian Yearbook of International Law, and he serves as the coordinator of Canadian contributions to the Oxford Reports on International Law in Domestic Courts.

In addition to many articles and book chapters on maritime, commercial and international law, Hugh has published Marine Cargo Delays (with Max Ganado), Multimodal Transport Rules (with Dr. Mary Brooks) and Canadian Maritime Law (with Drs. Edgar Gold and Aldo Chircop), which was co-winner of the Walter Owen Book Prize for 2003-05. In 2014, together with Phillip Saunders and Rob Currie, he produced the 8th edition of International Law Chiefly as Interpreted and Applied in Canada. Also in 2014 he completed a research project with Steve Coughlan, Rob Currie and Teresa Scassa with the publication of Law Beyond Borders: Extraterritorial Jurisdiction in an Age of Globalization.

In 2003 Hugh Kindred was honoured by the Canadian Association of Law teachers with its Award for Academic Excellence and in 2010 he was designated by Dalhousie University as Professor of Law Emeritus.

Moira McConnell

Professor of Law

Dr. Moira L. McConnell is a Professor of Law Emerita and Honorary Fellow of the Marine & Environmental Law Institute (MELAW). She retired from full-time teaching in 2015 but remains engaged in numerous research projects and supervision of masters and doctoral students at the Law School and other departments including the Marine Affairs Programme. In 2015 she was appointed to the UN World Maritime University (WMU) as External Examiner. A former Director of the MELAW she has been a member of the Faculty of Law at Dalhousie University for over 25 years and a member of the Nova Scotia Bar Society since 1990. She has had many important “law in practice” roles in her career including over a decade as a Special Advisor to the ILO in connection with the Maritime Labour Convention,2006. She is also a former Executive Director the Law Reform Commission of Nova Scotia. Over the last nearly 30 years Professor McConnell has undertaken numerous international, regional and national legal implementation projects related to the law of the sea and to maritime law and remains involved with projects with colleagues in MELAW.

Professor McConnell's research interests are in the fields of public and private international law and domestic law including international law, law of the sea, maritime law and policy, international labour law, environmental law, governance systems, corporate law and governance, administrative and constitutional law, social justice, contract law and human rights. She has over 100 publications in a wide range of topics in these fields. She is also a co-editor of the international interdisciplinary Ocean Yearbook (1998-ff), an Associate Editor of the Yearbook of International Environmental Law (2006-ff), and is on the editorial board of the WMU Journal of Maritime Affairs.

Dawn Russell

Associate Professor Dawn A. Russell practiced law in Halifax for five years with the Atlantic law firm of Stewart McKelvey Stirling Scales before beginning her career as a law teacher in 1987 as an Assistant Professor. She received tenure and was promoted to Associate Professor in July 1992. She served as Acting Dean of Dalhousie Law School from May 1, 1995 to March 31, 1996 and as Dean from April 1, 1996 to June 30, 2005.

Professor Russell is currently the President of St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Wendell Sanford holds degrees from Saint Mary's University (BA and BEd), Dalhousie (LL B) and Victoria University of Wellington, NZ (MPP)

Mr. Sanford has been a career diplomat, international lawyer, and naval officer. Most recently at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development he has been Canadian High Commissioner to Brunei and the first Canadian Representative to the Government of Burma. In Ottawa he has served as Director of Oceans and Environmental Law and Director of Criminal, Diplomatic and Security Law. During his lengthy diplomatic career he has been involved in the negotiation of the UN High Seas Fisheries Convention, Western and Central Pacific Tuna Convention and NAFO reform process. With respect to Canadian Arctic Mr. Sanford held the lead in the legal aspects of extending the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act to 200 nautical miles and the regulation which made compulsory reporting to NORDREG. He held the Foreign Affairs lead in developing the Canadian Extended Continental Shelf Submission for the first two years of the seven year process.

Prior to joining Canada's foreign ministry Mr. Sanford had an extensive naval reserve career including servicing as Staff Officer Naval Control and Shipping at Maritime Command Headquarters in Halifax.

Professor Emeritus Christian L. Wiktor was the Sir James Dunn Law Librarian at Dalhousie Law School for 27 years. Before working at Dalhousie Law Library, he spent ten years in library positions at the New York Public Library in Manhattan, and the State University of New York at Buffalo, Faculty of Law and Jurisprudence. In addition to his formal degrees he was a doctoral candidate in international law at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), specializing in the law of treaties. He continued this interest in producing a number of research tools such as the collection of Unperfected Treaties of the United States, 1776-1976, and the Canadian Treaty Calendar, 1928-1978, both published by Oceana, and two new publications on treaties, Multilateral Treaty Calendar 1648-1995, and Treaties Submitted to the U.S. Senate: Legislative History, 1989-2004, published by Nijhoff in 1998 and 2006. In 2003, Professor Wiktor published the Index to Canadian Treaties 1979-2003. His previous training as a bibliographer at the New York Public Library caused him to produce the first Canadian Bibliography of International Law published by the University of Toronto Press in 1984. He was the founder and editor of the Marine Affairs Bibliography, a current comprehensive index of marine law and policy literature (Vols. 1-13, 1980-1992. Professor Wiktor published recently two essays in tribute to two outstanding international legal scholars and co-editors of remarkable publications, entitled: “The Publications of Ronald St. John Macdonald,” (1954-2006), published in the Canadian Yearbook of International Law (Vol. 44, pp. 479-502), and, with Ted L. McDorman, “The Publications of Douglas Millard Johnston,” (1960-2008), published in The Future of Ocean Regime-Building, edited by Aldo Chircop, et al., published by Nijhoff in 2009 (pp. 739-765). 

Professor Wiktor was an associate of the Oceans Institute of Canada, and is now an honourary fellow of the Marine & Environmental Law Institute. He has been for many years, a member of the Board of Editors for the Ocean Yearbook. Professor Wiktor continued research on the history of U.S. treaty practice (from 1789) at the U.S. Senate Library in Washington, D.C., and as visitor at the University of South Carolina Law School in 2008 and 2009.

Ella Dodson has more than 30 years’ experience representing businesses of all sizes, governments, non-profits, financial institutions, and others with respect to:

• Structuring, negotiating, drafting and closing cross-border contracts and business deals;
• Advising on structure, and a broad range of business issues;
• Researching and drafting maritime and corporate law and policy.

She graduated from Columbia University in New York with an LL.M. in International Law.  She also holds a JD with High Honors from Illinois Institute of Technology-Chicago-Kent College of Law and an AB from Washington University in Saint Louis in Political Science and Asian Studies.

Ms. Dodson is admitted to the New York Bar and the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society. She is a member of Financing Sounding Board of the Baltic and International Maritime Council, (http://www.bimco.org).

Further information about her maritime practice may be found at http://www.hillbetts.com/ella-dodson.html.