Linnéa Nordlander

Linnéa Nordlander

Assistant Professor

Member of:

    Current research

    My main area of expertise is sustainability, climate change, and human rights law. My current research focuses on the potential and limitations of international human rights law to push states to meet their international climate commitments. In this connection, I take a particular interest in standard development in the international human rights system and ongoing climate change and human rights litigation at the international, regional, and domestic levels. 

    Beyond this work, I am interested in the intersection of environmental degradation and human rights more generally, as well as whether legal frameworks in the Nordics are adapted to addressing the adverse impacts of climate change on the rights of Arctic indigenous peoples in the region. I also take a keen interest in the human rights implications of new sustainability challenges, for instance the notions of just transition and greenwashing. Building on my earlier research on loss and damage, I also work on the human rights obligations of states to address climate harm and science-law interfaces in that connection, particularly with respect to legal use of attribution science.

     

    Faculty activities

    I am a member of the organising team of the Faculty of Law's Sustainability Hub. I am also involved in a number of research and education initiatives anchored at CLIMA as the co-host and co-founder of the podcast The Climate Show, coordinator for CLIMA's Climate Desk, and am actively involved in the planning and organisation of the Climate Breakfast Seminar Series and the Interdisciplinary Seminar on Climate, Energy and Sustainability, among others. 

     

    Background

    I was awarded my PhD degree at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, under the supervision of Prof. Morten Broberg and Associate Prof. Beatriz Martinez Romera. My PhD thesis, entitled 'Clarifying the Loss and Damage of Climate Change from a Human Rights Perspective: Scope, Implications, and Implementation Beyond Paris', examined the meaning of the loss and damage provision of the Paris Agreement and it's legal implications, understood from a human rights perspective. A book based on the thesis was published by Routledge in 2023. This research was part of DFF-funded project 'ReFleCT', led by PI Prof. Morten Broberg. I maintain a keen research interest in loss and damage in international climate change law and its related negotiations.

    Following my PhD research, I was employed as a postdoc through the project EnAct, funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark.

    A human rights lawyer by training, I also hold an LLM in International Human Rights Law (Lund University) and a First Class LLB (Hons) in English Law (University of Dundee). Prior to joining the University of Copenhagen, I was employed at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Lund, Sweden. During my time at the Institute, I worked with human rights research and capacity building. 

    Teaching

    I teach on a range of courses related to my areas of expertise, including:

    • Individets Grundlæggende Rettigheder (Fundamental Rights of the Individual) (BA)
    • International Law (BA)
    • Global Challenges in International Law (BA)
    • Climate Change and the Law (MA)
    • Laws of Armed Conflict (MA)

    I am keen to supervise bachelor and master theses on international and regional human rights, climate change, and environmental law, also in the context of the Greenhouse. I welcome projects on human rights law more generally, public international law, and the laws of armed conflict as well. I offer supervision on these topics for theses written in either Danish or English.

    ID: 188703013