Virgečilgehus

Mana is an LL.M. graduate in Polar Law from the University of Akureyri, Iceland, and is currently pursuing a PhD at the Norwegian Center for the Law of the Sea (NCLOS). Her PhD is titled Sustaining Good Relations with Nature: An Analysis of Rights of Nature and Relationality Towards Restorying of International Environmental Law. Based on the premise that the dualistic and anthropocentric foundations of legal modernity hinder environmental law's ability to address the global socio-ecological crisis, her thesis explores how international environmental law can be "restoried" through relational approaches to human-nature relationships. Using relationality as a central theoretical and methodological framework, her research critically examines the embedded dualisms in environmental law, interprets the transformative potential of the rights of nature, and envisions alternative legal futures. Through case studies from the Pacific region, including the legal recognition of the Whanganui River in Aotearoa New Zealand and relational practices in the Pacific Ocean, her thesis reveals how relational approaches can unsettle dominant legal assumptions and prefigure more reciprocal, interconnected, and sustainable human-nature relationships.

She is also a lecturer and teaches International Environmental Law and Law of the Sea.