Catalina is a Marine Social Science researcher. Her research, situated in critical ocean studies, focuses on ocean justice and marine governance in contested marine areas.

Currently, Catalina is a doctoral student in the Geography and International Development Department at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. From the perspective of maritime legal geographies, she looks at the role of Black and Indigenous legalities in governing the ocean in equitable and sustainable ways, and the extent to which they are integrated into the international ocean regimes. In particular, she works with the Black-Creole communities in the islands located on the Nicaraguan-Colombian contested border area, exploring the indigenous marine laws and their forms of resisting international regimes through indigenous rights regarding artisanal fisheries, sea mobility, and marine environmental resource management.

Garcia Chaves, Catalina. 2022. The ebb and flow of the seaflower marine biosphere reserve: Law entanglements and socioenvironmental justice in the southwestern Caribbean Sea. The Geographical Journal, 00:1–20. DOI: 10.1111/geoj.12497

Garcia Chaves, Catalina & Gupta, Joyeeta. 2022. Environmental and sociocultural claims within maritime boundary disputes. Marine Policy, 139 (2022). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2022.105043

Scholtens J., Song A.M., Stephen J., Garcia Ch. C., Bavinck M., Sowman M. (2019) Transdisciplinary Engagement to Address Transboundary Challenges for Small-Scale Fishers. In: Chuenpagdee R., Jentoft S. (eds) Transdisciplinarity for Small-Scale Fisheries Governance. MARE Publication Series, vol 21. Springer, Cham