Faculty

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). 

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. Sumie Nakaya - Assistant Professor at Mori Arinori Institute for Higher Education and Global Mobility - Hitotsubahi University, Tokyo, Japan.  

Sumie Nakaya is on special leave from the United Nations Department of Peace Operations, where she has overseen peacekeeping operations in Sudan and South Sudan, and strategic planning and crisis management, among others. She has Ph.D. in Political Science from the City University of New York (New York, NY), M.A. in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School (Medford, MA), and B.A from Sophia University (Tokyo, Japan). She has published on gender and conflict, state-building, and ceasefire.  Combining her academic and policy backgrounds, she also worked with the UN Development Fund for Women (subsequently transformed into UN Women) and the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum at the Social Science Research Council. Her areas of expertise are conflict resolution, peace operations, and peacebuilding.