Dr. Astrid Carrapatoso

Astrid Carrapatoso, born 1978, studied Political Science and English Philology at the University of Freiburg, Germany. She received a Master's Degree in Political Science in 2003 and finished her PhD thesis on “The Greening of Free Trade. Domestic Politics and Environmental Issues in New Zealand’s Free Trade Agreement Negotiations“ in 2007. In her thesis, she focused on the influence of civil society actors on the integration of environmental issues into the New Zealand-Thailand free trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership between Singapore, New Zealand, Chile and Brunei and the WTO negotiations on fisheries subsidies. During this time, she was funded by the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation. In 2004 and 2006, she worked as a research fellow at Auckland University. Since 2007, she is an assistant professor at the Political Science Department at the University of Freiburg. Until 2009, she was the managing director of the department. She is also responsible for the National Model United Nations (NMUN) programme. 

In 2008 and 2009, she actively participated in a wide range of academic conferences addressing the issues of environment, development and civil society. In 2009, she was invited as a speaker to a Hong Kong conference on the challenges of climate change for China and the Asia-Pacific region. In 2009, she was granted a research scholarship from the National Europe Center of the Australian National University in Canberra.

Her research focus is on climate change policies, environmental policy diffusion between the European Union and Asian countries, trade and environment issues including fisheries with a specific focus on the Asia-Pacific region as well as the role of civil society in environmental governance.