Dr Mara Ntona
Lecturer
Law
Personal statement
Mara Ntona is a Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde Law School, where she contributes to research and teaching at the Strathclyde Centre for Environmental Law and Governance (SCELG) and the Centre for the Study of Human Rights Law (CSHRL). She has expertise in the areas of international and EU environmental and human rights law.
Along with other SCELG colleagues, Mara has investigated the implications of Brexit for environmental governance in Scotland and the UK, with particular reference to issues relating to fisheries, nature conservation, and environmental rights. She has also provided legal consultancy services to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), focusing on place-based marine management and cross-institutional coordination within ocean governance.
As a research assistant to the BeneLex and MARINE BENEFITS projects, Mara explored issues of fair and equitable benefit-sharing arising in the context of the law of the sea – work that went on to inform her doctoral research. Her thesis, soon to be completed, explores the extent to which a human rights-based approach to marine spatial planning can serve as a legal tool for upholding and nurturing the multifaceted linkages between ocean health and human well-being.
Qualifications
Mara obtained her LLB from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She holds an LLM in Global Environment and Climate Change Law from the University of Edinburgh.
She is a member of the Scottish Universities Legal Network on Europe (SULNE) and the Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and Environment (GNHRE).
Before joining academia, Mara worked in private practice, advising clients in matters of constitutional, administrative, and human rights law. She is a member of the Athens Bar Association (Greece).
Publications
- Lost or Found? Human rights in socio-ecological justice narratives
- Webster Elaine, Desai Manisha, Ntona Mara, Salgado Mauricio
- (2025)
- The knowledge-power nexus in EU marine governance : from orthodoxy to pluralism by way of the human right to science
- Ntona Mara
- Journal of Human Rights and the Environment Vol 15, pp. 127–157 (2024)
- https://doi.org/10.4337/jhre.2024.02.01
- Human Rights and Ocean Governance : The Potential of Marine Spatial Planning in Europe
- Ntona Mara
- (2023)
- https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003404644
- Ocean-based climate action and human rights implications under the international climate change regime
- Morgera Elisa, Lennan Mitchell, Kulovesi Kati, La Bianca Giulia, Niner Holly J, Harrould-Kolieb Ellycia, Recio Piva Eugenia, Hills Jeremy, Ntona Mara, Lancaster Alana Malinde SN, Strand Mia, Snow Bernadette, Erwin Kira, Shannon Lynne, Rees Sian, Hyder Kieran, Engelhard Georg, Howell Kerry
- The International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law Vol 38, pp. 411-446 (2023)
- https://doi.org/10.1163/15718085-bja10142
- Advancing Participation in the Conservation & Sustainable Use of Marine Biodiversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ)
- Strand Mia, Morgera Elisa, Ntona Mara, Kenny Andrew, Sauer Warwick, Gaebel Christine, Lavelle Jessica, Snow Bernadette
- (2022)
- Architectures of Earth System Governance in context : revisiting Marine Spatial Planning in the EU's regional seas in light of the Anthropocene
- Cardesa-Salzmann Antonio, Ntona Mara
- Earth System Governance in turbulent times
(2021)
Teaching
Law of the sea; international and EU environmental law; international and EU human rights law
Research Interests
Environmental justice; ecosystem- and rights-based approaches to environmental governance; oceans governance; spatial planning
Professional Activities
- Ocean Laws of the World
- Advisor
- 15/9/2026
- Maritime Spatial Planning: Current Practice and Transformative Potentials
- Speaker
- 24/6/2025
- Tourism, spatial justice, and Indigenous Peoples’ rights
- Speaker
- 6/6/2025
- Sustainable Tourism? Toward a new socio-legal research agenda
- Organiser
- 5/6/2025
- Stories from Strathclyde: Celebrating our work with children and young people
- Participant
- 15/5/2025
- Revisiting Legal Pluralism: A comparative, socio-legal appraisal of the role of courts in the diffusion of innovative legal hybrids
- Examiner
- 21/3/2025
Projects
- The Legal Characterisation of Sustainable Tourism as a Structuring Instrument for a Common Mediterranean Area
- Huici Sancho, Laura (Principal Investigator) Álvarez Verdugo, Milagros (Principal Investigator) Cardesa-Salzmann, Antonio (Researcher) Ntona, Maria (Researcher)
- The JUSTURMED project asks whether sustainable tourism can act as a legal basis for the construction of a Common Mediterranean Area. It takes into account the strategic significance of tourism in the region, as the world's top tourist destination, and the challenges it faces, such as climate change, seasonal demographic pressure, environmental degradation, and risks to cultural and natural heritage, which highlight the need for more coherent and efficient cooperation frameworks. The Mediterranean is also a particularly complex area, where geopolitical tensions, structural inequalities between shores and significant institutional fragmentation converge. In this context, sustainable tourism offers a privileged prism for analysing the interaction between different regulatory systems and the capacity of law to drive structural change.
The research focuses on the complex interaction between international law and European Union law, as well as the role of regional organisations and structures that influence tourism governance. This analysis will provide an understanding of how different legal instruments (hard law, soft law and cooperation mechanisms) converge, overlap or generate gaps that directly affect the sustainability of tourism in the region.
The project has four main objectives. First, to assess the potential of tourism as a factor in Mediterranean regionalisation, identifying areas of convergence and divergence that may influence the possible creation of a Common Mediterranean Area. Second, to legally define sustainable tourism, taking into account the cultural, environmental and security specificities that characterise the region, incorporating elements such as heritage protection, distributive equity and obligations related to the safety of destinations and travellers. Thirdly, to analyse the regulatory interaction between international and European instruments, both hard law and soft law, with particular attention to the challenges posed by regulatory fragmentation and opportunities for legal coordination. And fourthly, to assess the capacities and limitations of Mediterranean institutional cooperation, including the EU, UNESCO, UNWTO, the UfM and other relevant structures in the region, in order to promote coherent and effective models of sustainable tourism.
JUSTURMED aims to generate knowledge that contributes to the implementation of the new Mediterranean Pact which, among other instruments, assigns sustainable tourism a strategic role in the articulation of a shared regional space. It also seeks to improve Euro-Mediterranean governance through operational legal proposals that support the design of coherent public policies, promote institutional coordination and enable sustainability challenges to be addressed more effectively. The project aims to provide useful tools for the development of national and European strategies that reinforce an environmentally protected, socially inclusive and culturally preserved Mediterranean. - 01-Jan-2026 - 31-Jan-2029
- Sustainability and Tourism: Towards a new socio-legal research agenda
- Cardesa-Salzmann, Antonio (Principal Investigator) Ntona, Maria (Principal Investigator)
- This project is funded by the University's International Stategic Patnership Fund. It seeks to lay the ground for a larger funding bid for a collaborative research project on Sustainable Tourism from a socio-legal perspective with academic and non-academic partners. It builds on existing academic networks and initial expressions of interest with decision-makers, stakeholders in the tourism sector, and civil society organisations.
Tourism is a multifaceted economic sector, whose relevance and impact cuts across jurisdictions and levels of governance. Ensuring the sector’s sustainability is a challenging endeavour, requiring a complex approach to regulation and decision-making. Yet scholarship on sustainable tourism is sorely lacking in legal perspectives, including ones of a critical, comparative, and interdisciplinary nature.
Planned activities aim at filling this critical knowledge gap. They aim to bring together a diverse team of academics, stakeholders and decision-makers, based in Scotland and abroad, and invite them to co-produce an agenda for future socio-legal impact-driven research on sustainable tourism. - 14-Jan-2024 - 15-Jan-2025
- Future of Rights and Governance (FORGE) Experiment for Change: Ecological Emergencies
- Webster, Elaine (Principal Investigator) Ntona, Maria (Co-investigator)
- 23-Jan-2024 - 01-Jan-2025
- INTERNALLY FUNDED: Strathclyde Centre for Doctoral Training in Human Rights-based Decision-Making (£132,000)
- Harkens, Adam (Co-investigator) Miyake, Esperanza (Co-investigator) Nicol, Emma (Co-investigator) Ntona, Maria (Co-investigator) Schippers, Birgit (Co-investigator) Webster, Elaine (Co-investigator)
- Internally funded
£132,000 - 01-Jan-2023 - 31-Jan-2027