Faculty

	Prof. Dr. Katja Biedenkopf - Professor of Sustainability Politics - Leuven International and European Studies (LINES), KU Leuven Katja Biedenkopf is an Associate Professor of Sustainability Politics at Leuven International and European Studies (LINES), KU Leuven. She heads the Sustainable Futures research group within LINES. Prof. Biedenkopf particularly focuses on carbon pricing, chemicals, electronic waste and climate policy. Processes of policy learning, leadership, pioneership and policy diffusion are central to Prof. Biedenkopf’s research.She teaches courses on European climate and energy policy, global environmental politics and EU policy-making. Prof. Biedenkopf is a convinced proponent of interactive teaching methods, in particular simulations and case studies. She chairs the working group on international relations of the Belgian Federal Council for Sustainable Development (FRDO/CFDD) and is a member of the KU Leuven Sustainability Council, the co-chair of the Diversity and Sustainability Committee of the Faculty of Social Sciences, KU Leuven and the vice-leader of the working group on Contestation of the COST Action EU Foreign Policy Facing New Realities (ENTER). She also is a member of the research group on Norms and Change in World Politics at the Justus-Liebig Universität Gießen, Germany.
	Ms. Charline Depoorter - Doctoral Researcher - Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, KU Leuven Charline Depoorter is a Doctoral Researcher at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies and at the Division of Bioeconomics, KU Leuven. Her research focuses on governance for sustainable development, and more specifically on voluntary sustainability standards (VSS). She is a member of the VSS4F/Wood project, which aims to assess sustainability gains and trade-offs of VSS in the food and wood sectors. Charline holds a Master's degree in International Politics from KU Leuven (2019). She also obtained a Master's degree in Global Environment, Politics and Society from the University of Edinburgh (2018).
	Ms. Weiyuan Gao - Doctoral Researcher - Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, KU Leuven Weiyuan Gao is a Doctoral Researcher pursuing a PhD at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies (GGS) and the Institute of International Law at KU Leuven. She holds the LL.M in international economic law from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2018 and she obtained her Bachelor of Laws degree from Southwest Jiaotong University in China in 2017. Prior to joining the GGS, Weiyuan was a research assistant at the Faculty of Law of The Chinese University of Hong Kong.Weiyuan is working in the CONNECTIVITY project at GGS with a specific focus on the role of China in global governance.Weiyuan’s main areas of interest include public international law, trade law and international economic law.
	Prof. Dr. Hyeok Jeong - Professor - Faculty of Graduate School of International Studies - Seoul National University Hyeok Jeong, Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, worked as a professor at the Economics Departments of University of Southern California and Vanderbilt University in the United States, at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Japan, and also at the KDI School of Public Policy and Management in Korea, before he joined the faculty of Graduate School of International Studies at the Seoul National University in 2015, where he works now. Professor Jeong was a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago, at UCLA, and also at the Institute of Empirical Macroeconomics of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. He also worked at World Bank as a Consultant Economist and served as the Director of Development Research Division of Center for International Development at KDI. Professor Jeong's main research interests include growth and development, human capital, income distribution dynamics in relation to financial deepening and labor market issues. His recent research agenda include firm dynamics and international trade, higher education reform, Korean development experience, North Korean economy, and development cooperation issues such as knowledge sharing, development finance, and the design of triangular cooperation for international development.
	Prof. Dr. Yu-Min Joo - Associate Professor - KDI School of Public Policy and Management (KDIS) - South Korea Prior to joining KDIS, Yu-Min Joo taught at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore as an assistant professor. She holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Master’s in Urban Planning from Harvard University. She researches and publishes on urban development and policy issues in Asia, particularly on the topics of urban governance, city branding, smart cities, and urban mega-projects. Her latest books include Megacity Seoul: Urbanization and the Development of Modern South Korea (2019) and a co-edited volume titled Smart Cities in Asia: Governing Development in the Era of Hyper-Connectivity (2020).
	Prof. Dr. Robert Kissack - Associate Professor, Head of Studies - Institut Barcelona Estudis Internationals Robert Kissack has been at IBEI since 2008. His research profile is at the intersection of the foreign policy of the European Union (EU) and international organisation. More specifically, it has centred on the EU as an actor in the multilateral system and his book Pursuing Effective Multilateralism… (Palgrave 2010) was one of the first in this field. He specialises in examining the capacity of the EU to operate in many different multilateral organisations, including the ILO, FAO, UN General Assembly and Security Council, the WTO and the IMF. He has worked in two research projects in this area, EU-Perform (funded by the European Science Foundation) and EUN-NET, a brand new Jean Monnet Network (2017-2019). He also works closely with colleagues at IBEI, including Esther Barbé, Oriol Costa and Elisabeth Johansson-Nogués in many projects on European foreign policy. He teaches one of the core courses of the Masters in International Relations, International Relations Theory, during the first semester, as well as a core course in the Master in International Development, Governance National and Global Institutions, also in first semester. He is also Head of Studies and Coordinator of the IR programme.
	Dr. Axel Marx - Deputy Director - Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, KU Leuven Axel Marx is Deputy Director at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, KU Leuven. Founded in 2007, the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies is an interdisciplinary research centre of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the KU Leuven (University of Leuven). Marx has been involved as a research manager and senior researcher since its foundation. It was set up to promote, support and carry out high-quality international, innovative and interdisciplinary research on global governance. In addition to its fundamental research activities the Centre carries out independent applied research and offers innovative policy advice and solutions to policy-makers on multilateral governance and global public policy issues. Since 2010, the Centre has been recognized as a KU Leuven Centre of Excellence and since 2016 as a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence. Axel Marx has managed over 40 funded research projects including multi-team and international FP7 and Horizon 2020 projects and acted as a consultant to several national and international organizations including the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Committee of the Regions, International Labour Organization, United Nations Industrial Development Organization, the OECD, IDEA, Worldbank, the Belgian, Dutch and German Governments. His academic publications (100+) have appeared in four dozen leading international peer reviewed journals and 6 languages (English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch and Chinese). As a guest lecturer he has thought inter alia at European University Institute and China University of Political Science and Law. His research interests include voluntary sustainability standards, human rights, global governance, governance through trade, EU trade policy and comparative case methods.
	Prof. Dr. Shinji Yamashige - Professor,Graduate school of Economics - Dean,School of International and Public Policy - Hitotsubashi University Shinji Yamashige graduated from the Department of Economics at Hitotsubashi University in 1985 and from Johns Hopkins University in 1992 （Ph. D. in Economics）. He served as an assistant professor at the Department of Economics, the University of Toronto, from 1992 to 1996. He has been serving at Hitotsubashi University since 1996. He specializes in public economics and has been analyzing public policies and institutions from the viewpoints of efficiency and equity. His research topics include public policies for population ageing, declining fertility, social capital, infrastructure, health and medicine. His book Economic Analysis of Families and Society: The Transformation of Japanese Society and Public Policies, University of Tokyo Press, 2013（in Japanese) won the Nikkei Prize for Excellent Books in Economic Science in 2013.