Yelena Yermakova is an Earth System Interventions Fellow in Environmental Law and Policy at the Emmett Institute at UCLA School of Law. Her research lies in political legitimacy, global governance, polar regions, and climate interventions. She previously worked as a postdoctoral fellow at LUISS University, Rome where she worked on the ethics of marine carbon dioxide removal and as a Fung Global Fellow at Princeton University where she worked on legitimacy of the UN climate regime.

Yermakova received her B.A. in Political Science at UCLA, her MPA in Public Policy at Cornell University and her PhD in Philosophy at the University of Oslo, Norway. Her PhD dissertation "Governing Antarctica: Assessing the Legitimacy and Justice of the Antarctic Treaty System" is about decision-making and authority in the Antarctic regime.

Yermakova’s publications have appeared in the Polar Journal and The Yearbook of Polar Law, among others.