Staff Profiles

Naporn Popattanachai currently holds a position of Lecturer in Environmental and Marine Law at the School of Law, University of Galway. His research interests and expertise lie in the fields of Public International Law, International Environmental Law, International Law of the Sea, and Trade-related Environment matters. Prior to his appointment at University of Galway, He was an Assistant Professor at Faculty of Law, Thammasat University, Thailand where he gave lectures on the abovementioned areas. Prior to his academic appointment at Thammasat University, Naporn practised as a lawyer with Hunton & Williams (Thailand) Ltd (now Hunton Andrew Kurth LLP) where he provided legal services on various matters including constitutional and administrative law, environmental law, WTO law, public international law and general corporate matters.

Naporn gives advice to both public and private institutions. He, for example, advises the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment on environmental legal matters especially those concerning protection of the marine environment and transboundary pollution. He worked with international institutions including the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on various issues including protection of the marine environmental from plastic pollution and international illegal trafficking of wildlife in Southeast Asia respectively.

Naporn completed his LL.B. from Thammasat University, LL.M. in European Legal Studies at the University of Bristol, the UK in 2011, and LL.M. in Environmental Law and Policy at University College London in 2012. At UCL, his dissertation titled 'The Critical Analysis of the Application of Proportionality Principle in Trade-related Environment Case Law of the EU and WTO' was awarded distinction. He received his PhD with a particular focus on Protection of the Marine Environment from Pollution from Land-based Activities from Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent University, UK. 

He was an ITLOS/Nippon Fellowship at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, Hamburg, Germany. During his time at the ITLOS, he published an article on 'Environmental Disputes from Regional Sea Programmes before ITLOS: Its Potential Role, Contribution, and the Challenges it Would Face in a Land-based Pollution Case' in 14 New Zealand Yearbook of International Law (2016) 58 - 93. He also published in the field of the protection of the marine environment especially those concerning marine plastic pollution. Recently his research article titled `Marine plastics: Fragmentation, effectiveness and legitimacy in international lawmaking¿ (2018) co-authored with Professor Elizabeth Kirk in Review of European, Comparative, and International Environmental Law received an accolade for top-cited paper of 2018-2019.