The second year of the ODIPE seminar series continues to explore the making of the global Ocean as a political, institutional and ecological space. This session brings together two complementary research perspectives on the International Seabed Authority (ISA), established under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to organise and regulate mineral-related activities in the seabed Area beyond national jurisdiction.
By examining how the ISA has been historically shaped, maintained and transformed through diplomatic negotiations, institutional practices and interactions between actors holding competing visions of ocean governance, the session seeks to shed light on the making of international ocean governance. The first contribution, by Tiago Pires da Cruz, examines the development of the ISA and the persistence of its institutional centrality despite its difficulties in fulfilling its original mandate to organise and regulate deep-sea mining. Based on multi-sited fieldwork conducted between 2021 and 2024, the research explores how different actors contribute to maintaining, contesting and transforming the organisation’s role.
The second contribution will be led by Yingfan Chen, a PhD researcher at the Academy of Overseas Chinese Studies, Jinan University, currently visiting the Centre de recherches internationals (CERI) at Sciences Po, Paris. Drawing primarily on historical document analysis, she will share insights from her research on the 1994 Agreement, which reshaped the institutional and financial arrangements governing activities in the seabed Area beyond national jurisdiction. Her work also examines the role and influence of US actors in shaping the ISA’s institutional framework, particularly during the negotiations leading to the Agreement.
Bringing these two perspectives into dialogue, the seminar will explore how historical and ethnographic approaches can complement one another in the study of international organisations. It will also provide an opportunity to reflect on the methodological challenges of investigating institutional processes across different periods, spaces and scales of international Ocean governance.
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