We are very happy to introduce our PhD fellow Johanna!
Johanna Coenen (ESR 12), supervised by Jens Newig, will be working on the research project Governance Institutions for Sustainability in Globally Telecoupled Systems, based at Leuphana University of Lüneburg.
After studying abroad, Johanna is now back in her home country to do a PhD at Leuphana University of Lüneburg in Germany. She received a Bachelor degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences with a focus on International Relations and Sustainable Development from University College Maastricht and a Master degree in Political Science with a specialisation in Global Environmental Governance from VU University Amsterdam.
The aim of Johanna’s research project is to understand how public policies reinforce land use change and associated environmental and social problems far beyond their territorial borders, as well as how state actors (e.g. individual states or collection of states) and non-state actors (e.g. firms, NGOs or investors) can effectively respond to the sustainability challenges which arise from global production and consumption processes that span multiple geographical and institutional boundaries. A central challenge is to identify the key actors and institutions involved intelecouplings in order to study which policy interventions and governance arrangements are decisive for the prevention, emergence, detection, coordination and transformation of inter-regionally related land systems.
The COUPLED project means for Johanna a unique opportunity to take part in a timely, interdisciplinary and challenging academic discussion that contributes to the development of effective governance and policy tools for sustainable land use.