During the 2023-2024 academic year, the Islands and Small States Institute (ISSI) of the University of Malta will be hosting Prof. Rebecca Hamilton, professor of law at the American University Washington College of Law, who has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Scholarship Board.

Prof. Hamilton will research and teach International Law, working with graduate students from small island developing states from the Pacific, Caribbean, and Indian Ocean. As Professor Hamilton explains, there is a growing need to prepare students for the climate dimension in all areas of law. In her research titled ‘Digital Life and Climate Survival’, Professor Hamilton explores the growing conflicts between the technology industry, which aims to reduce the importance of physical location, and climate activists who emphasise the significance of specific places.

Dr Stefano Moncada, Director of the ISSI, highlighted that, “at the ISSI, we are delighted to be hosting Prof. Hamilton, a scholar of great repute, at our Institute during the first half of the coming year. Besides researching and teaching, we will be collaborating on preparing for the Fourth United Nations Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS), which will be hosted by Antigua and Barbuda in the summer of 2024 and for which the ISSI will be collaborating with a number of its partner universities in island states around the world.”

The Fulbright Program, supported by governments, institutions, corporations, and foundations around the world, is the U.S. government's flagship international educational exchange program. Since 1946, it has provided over 400,000 participants, among which 62 Nobel Prize laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize recipients, with the opportunity to exchange ideas and find solutions to global challenges.