Annie Brett

Annie decided to do her PhD with Kenny after he lured her in with promises that she could learn to fly a helicopter for her PhD. In a complete 180, once she arrived in Miami he instead convinced her to be the guinea pig in Abess's joint JD/PhD program. While she is pretty sure that doing two degrees at once was not as fun as learning to fly a helicopter, she discovered that she actually liked law and wrote her dissertation on the intersection of law, exploration, and emerging technologies. She’s particularly interested in how new methods of gathering environmental data can be used in litigation, regulation, and as a means to evaluate the effectiveness of existing environmental laws. 

After finishing her degrees Annie attempted briefly to join the real world, where she worked in international ocean policy as an Andre Hoffmann Fellow for the World Economic Forum and Stanford's Center for Ocean Solutions. However, years of watching Kenny "working" as a professor while somehow spending most of his time on diving expeditions convinced her that academia could provide her too with a fake job to fund her sailing hobby. She is now a professor at University of Florida's Levin College of Law, where she gets to shape the legal minds of tomorrow, continue writing “fun” law review articles, and sit on (actually) fun national committees that work on environmental and maritime policy. She spends her free time thinking about treasure law and running a rehabilitation home for wayward mini-tugboats. 

For all your questions about exploration, law, and sailboat diesel engine repair, find Annie at https://www.law.ufl.edu/faculty/annie-brett