My current research project focuses on climate policies at the sub-national level from a legal and political science perspective. It aims to understand factors that promote the diffusion of climate policies between subnational governments. I collaborate with Dr. Charlotte Blattner and Prof. Dr. Karin Ingold at the University of Bern.

Framenet (Frames in Production: Actors, Networks, Diffusion) is a collaborative research network across research institutions in Germany, Canada and the UK, funded by the Open Research Area (DFG, SSHRC, ESRC) with an overall budget of £1 million. 

Since the beginning of this project in May 2021, I have been the case lead responsible for the debate on climate policies and competitiveness issues in the European Union since 1997. 

As part of this project, I coauthored "Timely climate proposals. Discourse networks and (dis)continuity in European policies" published in the Journal of European Public Policy in October 2023. It looks at the influence of the discursive field for the support of climate policies by focusing on two specific policy proposals of the European Green Deal: the carbon border adjustment mechanism and the reform for a greener Common Agricultural Policy. We show that two elements favor policy change: the resonance of new frames with the discursive field and the presence of brokers connecting previously disconnected actors or coalitions. 

We are currently conducting interviews with representatives of the European Union to complete this project.  

My doctoral research looked at the evolution of norms in the trading regime regarding climate policies. It sheds light on informal ways World Trade Organization (WTO) law can evolve before an official change in interpretation occurs. 

Empirically, it relies on original dataset and provides an empirical demonstration of the interactional evolution of international by looking at the example of border carbon adjustment (BCA) with WTO rules.

Methodologically, it builds on the current empirical turn in international law and presents an innovative empirical analysis of the evolution of the perception of international law. I apply for the first time discourse network analysis to international law and show the potential of this innovative method developed in political science to systemically trace legal debates, legal trends, and how legal actors are connected based on their legal interpretation and understandings.  

Theoretically, the results of this research bring five main insights. First, it offers an empirical analysis of the interactional international law framework of the WTO. Second, it adds to the literature showing the relevance of going beyond a state-centric approach to international law and norms evolution. Third, it shows the importance of legitimacy to sustain and improve compliance and as a feature that can promote the evolution of international law. Fourth, it highlights the importance of discourse as a vector of diffusion of shared understandings of norms. Fifth, it bridges the interactional international law framework with complementing theories in international relations, such as discursive institutionalism and sociological legitimacy.