Organisers

Charline Depoorter is a PhD researcher at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies and at the Division of Bioeconomics, KU Leuven (Belgium). Her main research focus is on governance for sustainable development, more specifically through global value chains. In her PhD, she investigates the institutional design effectiveness of voluntary sustainability standards as private market-based governance instruments for sustainable development in the agricultural and forestry sectors, with a case study on the Indonesian cocoa sector. She has previously worked for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in Geneva and has field work experience in Indonesia. She holds Master's degrees from the University of Edinburgh and KU Leuven. 

Paulina Flores Martinez is a PhD student working at the University of York - SEI York (Sustainable Consumption and Production group). Prior to joining academia, she worked at public servant and consultancy positions in Mexico. She gained experience with both rural and urban policies around climate change adaptation and mitigation. Her PhD project explores on the one hand the political economy of the environmental governance of key agri-food commodities, and on the other the challenges around traceability and environmental impact estimations. Her research focuses on Latin American countries’ agro-export sector. 

Simon Happersberger is a PhD candidate at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the UN University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies. He is interested in the nexus of international trade, environmental sustainability, and political economy. In his PhD he investigates the effectiveness of EU policy instruments on sustainable trade. Simon collected first professional experiences at the European Parliament, the German Institute for International Affairs and the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation Madagascar. Simon studied political science and German philology in Goettingen, Paris, Berlin and Cape Town.

-------------------------------------

Former Organiser

Asgeir Barlaup is a PhD Researcher affiliated with the project 'POLYCARBON' (2020-2024) at KU Leuven in Belgium. He is interested in costly climate policies and the political economy of electricity provision. In his PhD he investigates mitigation policies targeting the electricity sector in the Republic of Korea. He obtained a master’s degree in international environmental and resource policy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University and has previously worked as a trainee at the Norwegian embassy in Washington D.C.