Dr Alan D. Hemmings is a New Zealand-based specialist on Antarctic governance and an Adjunct Professor at Gateway Antarctica at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. His Antarctic experience includes time south with the British, French and New Zealand national programmes and with Greenpeace. He spent two and a half years at the British Antarctic Survey’s Signy Island station as a biologist, and during his second winter, as Station Commander. In this latter role, he coordinated communications between British Antarctic stations and various field parties on South Georgia with the Royal Navy and authorities in the United Kingdom during the Falklands/Malvinas War. He participated in Antarctic Treaty System diplomatic and scientific meetings between 1989 and 2010 on the national delegation of New Zealand and the expert delegation of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings and Meetings of the CCAMLR Commission. He was present, inter alia, at the negotiations that produced the Madrid Protocol and the decade long technical and diplomatic negotiations that led to the adoption of Annex VI to that Protocol on ‘Liability Arising from Environmental Emergencies’. He has worked on Antarctic policy matters across a number of countries, including government Antarctic advisory bodies in New Zealand and Australia. Hemmings has substantial operational experience of the Antarctic – embracing the Antarctic Peninsula, Scotia Arc, Ross Sea Region, across the maritime domain around the Southern Ocean (in Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans sectors), and the Subantarctic islands in these three sectors. In an earlier life he was a zoologist, who conducted avian behavioural and ecological research in Antarctica and New Zealand’s Chatham Islands. His current research focuses on Antarctic geopolitics, considering the roles of globalism, changing world-order and contemporary roles of territorial sovereignty and, particularly, nationalism. Hemmings’ published work includes 130+ articles and chapters and a number of books, including: ‘Looking South: Australia’s Antarctic Agenda’, edited with Lorne Kriwoken and Julia Jabour (2007, Federation Press), ‘Antarctic Security in the Twenty-First Century’, edited with Don Rothwell and Karen Scott (HB 2012, PB 2013: Routledge); ‘Exploring Antarctic Values’, edited with Daniela Liggett (2013: Gateway Antarctica); ‘Handbook on the Politics of Antarctica’, edited with Klaus Dodds and Peder Roberts (2017: Edward Elgar – with work on a 2nd Edition currently (2023) underway); ‘International Polar Law’, edited with Donald R. Rothwell (2018: Edward Elgar); ‘Philosophies of Polar Law’, edited with Dawid Bunikovski (HB 2020, PB 2023: Routledge) and, currently underway ‘A Research Agenda for Polar Law’ co-authored with Timo Koivurova (Edward Elgar, 2025). Hemmings is a Member of the Advisory Committee for the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS); a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS); and Member of SCAR’s Standing Committee on the Humanities and Social Sciences (SC-HASS).
