People

Dr Federica Bicchi is an Associate Professor in International Relations of Europe in the Department of International Relations at LSE, where she has been teaching Foreign Policy Analysis, Europe in the World, and Europe, the United States and the Arab-Israeli conflict, all at post-graduate level.

Her current research focuses on contemporary trends in European diplomacy, especially in relation to the digitalisation of diplomacy and developments in European foreign policy cooperation. Her theoretical perspective contributes to the “practice turn” in International Relations.

Recent publications include articles in Review of International Studies, Cooperation and Conflict, Global Networks, Journal of Common Market Studies, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Geopolitics, Journal of European Public Policy, Democratization, and Geopolitics. She has published European Foreign Policy Making towards the Mediterranean (Palgrave, 2007), and edited Europe and the Occupation of Palestinian Territories since 1967 (Routledge, 2020), European Diplomatic Practices (2018, with Niklas Bremberg) and The Struggle for Influence in the Middle East (2015, with Benoit Challand and Steven Heydeman).

Dr Elitsa Garnizova is the Director of the Trade Policy Hub of LSE Consulting at LSE, which provides specialised advisory services in the area of trade and investment policy. 

Elitsa has a PhD in International Political Economy from LSE. Her primary research interests include European trade and investment policy, European foreign policy, and international affairs. Her research focuses on international trade and European Union trade policy, particularly looking at the causes and effects of non-tariff measures and regulatory issues within trade negotiations. She specialises in the use of qualitative methods, including interviews, focus groups, and discourse analysis, to study the nexus between trade and regulatory regimes. Her current projects focus on assessing the impact of trade agreements on economic and sustainability issues, especially human rights, on EU-US-UK relations, and on ongoing EU trade negotiations.

Asha Herten-Crabb is a PhD student in the Department of International Relations at LSE. Her PhD project aims to conceptualise anti-hegemonic, feminist, and decolonizing approaches to international political economy policy making with a specific focus on MERCOSUR trade negotiations with the EU and Canada.

Before joining LSE, she worked as a researcher and policy analyst at the Chatham House Centre on Global Health Security, the Universities of Melbourne and Oxford, the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy, and ActionAid. She is currently working Dr Mareike Kleine of the European Institute of LSE and with Dr Clare Wenham in the Department of Health Policy at the LSE on a number of COVID-19 related topics including the gendered impacts of COVID-19, the UK response as a whole, and the EU as an actor in global health governance.

Elisabeth Johansson-Nogués is a Visiting Fellow at the Department of International Relations at LSE for the academic year 2022-2023. She is Associate Professor at the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals, Spain. She holds a BA from the University of San Diego, United States, and a PhD in International Relations from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain.

Her research interests centre on the European Union’s foreign and security policy, multilateralism and international security. Elisabeth has written numerous publications on EU’s foreign and security policy in relation both to the Mediterranean/Middle East as well as on Eastern Europe, including topics of civil society, gender, migration, (dis)information and diplomacy. She has also published work on the EU and group politics in the context of the United Nations.

Recent publications can be found in Political Geography, International Peacekeeping, Democratization, Common Market Law Review, Cooperation and Conflict, Mediterranean Politics, Security Dialogue and International Affairs. She was also co-editor of the volume European Union Contested Foreign Policy in a New Global Context, published by Springer in 2020 (with M. Vlaskamp and E. Barbé). 

Dr Mareike Kleine is Associate Professor of EU and International Politics at the European Institute at LSE, where she has been teaching European Integration from a Global Governance Perspective, and European Policy Making and International Cooperation.

Her research focuses on global governance, EU politics, international organization, and international political economy. She is interested in the dynamics between domestic politics and international cooperation and has written extensively on the relationship between formal and informal governance in international organizations. Her recent work explores how historical narratives affect preferences for international cooperation. She is currently working with Dr Clare Wenham in the Department of Health Policy at the LSE and Asha Herten-Crabb on a number of COVID-19 related topics including the gendered impacts of COVID-19, the UK response as a whole, and the EU as an actor in global health governance.

She has published in top field and general political science journals, such as the British Journal of Political Science, International Theory, Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of European Public Policy, and the Review of International Organizations. Her book Informal Governance in the European Union appeared in 2013 with Cornell University Press.

Dr Mathias Koenig-Archibugi is Associate Professor (Reader) in Global Politics with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and in the Department of International Relations at LSE.

He has been teaching Global Governance and convening the MSc in Global Governance, International Institutions and Global Public Policy. His research interests focus on International Institutions, Global Governance, Global Health Policy, International Labour Standards and Global Democracy.

He has published in, among others, International Studies quarterly, Political Studies, The Journal of Politics, International Theory, European Journal of International Relations, International Organization and International Political Science Review. He has published International Organizations and Democracy: An Assessment (Oxford University Press 2018) and edited Global Democracy (2012, with Daniele Archibugi and Raffaele Marchetti), Global Governance and Public Accountability (Blackwell 2005, with David Held), Taming Globalization: Frontiers of Governance (Polity Press 2003, with David Held).

Jan Lepeu is a PhD researcher at the European University Institute (EUI), specialised in international sanctions and EU foreign policy. He will spend the Spring 2023 at the LSE as a full-time Research Exchange Student in International Relations.

Jan is a graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the College of Europe in Bruges. He has worked for various non-governmental and international organisations in the humanitarian and trade sectors. He is also an active member and contributor to foraus, the leading Swiss think tank on foreign policy.

Dr Irene Morlino is an LSE Fellow in the Department of International Relations at LSE, having recently completed her PhD in the Department on the effectiveness of EU humanitarian aid projects in Myanmar, Lebanon and Mozambique between 2015 and 2017.

Her research interests focus on EU humanitarian aid and factors affecting effectiveness vis-à-vis pre-established projects’ objectives. Her main publications concern EU-UN coordination in food assistance and the impact that COVID-19 had on Italy’s political and legal dynamics during the first wave of the pandemic:

• ‘Decentralisation in times of crisis: asset or liability? The case of Germany and Italy during Covid-19’ in Swiss Political Science Review, with K. Kuhn, (2021).
• ‘Confronting the Covid-19 pandemic. Grief, Loss and Social Order’, London. with K. Millar, Y. Han, M. Bayly, K. Khun (2020): The London School of Economics and Political Science, p.64. Available here
• ‘Food assistance: what role for EU-UN coordination?’, EFPU Working Paper 2018/1

Katherine Pye is an MPhil/PhD candidate in the Department of International Relations at LSE, where her research is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. She is currently Deputy Editor for Vol. 51 of Millennium: Journal of International Studies.

Katherine holds a BA in History and Politics from Magdalen College, Oxford and an MA in EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies from the College of Europe. Prior to doctoral study she worked in civilian crisis response at the Council of the EU and was Clara Marina O’Donnell Fellow at the Centre for European Reform, where she researched EU-Africa relations and European military intervention in the Sahel.

Her research interests focus on intervention and peacebuilding (in)effectiveness, particularly in the case of the EU in Mali. She has published “A means to an End or an End in Itself? The EU Integrated Approach in Mali”, College of Europe EU Diplomacy Paper 05/2019, available here

Professor Karen E. Smith is Professor of International Relations in the Department of International Relations at LSE, where she has been teaching Europe in the World. She is currently Head of Department and was one of the founders of the European Foreign Policy Unit, which she directed until 2021.

Her main area of research centres on the international relations of the European Union. She is currently working on projects regarding Europe and the changing applicability of the anti-genocide norm, women in foreign policy-making, and EU and Nordic Group diplomacy at the United Nations.

She has written extensively on the formulation and implementation of common EU foreign policies, the EU’s pursuit of ‘ethical’ foreign policy goals such as promoting human rights and democracy, policy-making within European states regarding genocide, and EU-UN relations.

Recent publications include:

• Karen E Smith, ‘Emotions and European Union Foreign Policy‘, International Affairs, vol. 97, no. 2, 2021, pp. 287-304.
• Karen E Smith and Katie Verlin Laatkianen, eds, Group Politics in UN Multilateralism, Diplomatic Studies series vol. 16 (Leiden: Brill, 2020).
• Karen E Smith, ‘EU Member States at the UN: A Case of Europeanisation Arrested?‘, Journal of Common Market Studies, vol . 55, no. 3, 2017, pp. 628-644.
• Karen E Smith, ‘A European Union global strategy for a changing world?’, in special issue on Europe and the World, International Politics, vol. 54, no. 4, 2017, pp. 503-518.
• Karen E Smith, European Union Foreign Policy in a Changing World, 3rd edition (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014)
• Karen E Smith, Can the European Union be a Pole in a Multipolar World?‘ International Spectator, vol. 48, no. 2, July 2013.
• Karen E Smith, Genocide and the Europeans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)

Dr. Marta Soprana is an LSE Fellow in International Political Economy in the Department of International Relations, where she teaches courses on the political economy of trade.

Her research interests fall into the field of trade policy, trade in services, digital trade, and law and technology. She is particularly interested in exploring the relationship between emerging technologies, especially artificial intelligence (AI), and international trade from a legal and policy perspective.

She holds a PhD cum laude from Bocconi University. Her doctoral thesis, which focused on the role that international trade agreements play in AI governance, addressed the emergence of AI-specific policies, including the EU proposal for a Regulation on AI.

Recent publications include: 

• Sauvé, P., & Soprana, M. (2020). "Chapter 11 The Evolution of the EU Digital Trade Policy". In Law and Practice of the Common Commercial Policy.
• Marta Soprana,'The Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA): Assessing the Significance of the New Trade Agreement on the Block,' Trade, Law and Development, Vol. 13, No.1 (2021).

Dr Stephen Woolcock is currently an Associate Member of the International Trade Policy Unit, which he founded in 1999.

He has taught International Political Economy, and Trade and Economic Diplomacy at LSE since 1999. Before joining LSE, he worked on trade and EU policy at Chatham House and for the private sector.

His ongoing research has been on EU external economic policies and particularly the regulation of integrating markets in the context of preferential and multilateral trade and investment agreements. He has served as a consultant to the European Parliament, European Commission, OECD, Commonwealth Secretariat, the UK and other governments.  

Recent publications include:

• ‘The UK and the Comprehensive and Progressive Transpacific Partnership’ in Westlake M. Outside the EU: Options for Britain, Agenda Publishing, 2020.
• ‘The European Union’s Common Commercial Policy at the Heart of the EU’s Global Role’ in Telò, M. and Weyenbergh, A. The Supranational Governance at Stake, Routledge, 2020.
• ‘Continuity or change: the political economy of European trade policy’ in Becker.P and Lippert.B (eds) Handbuch der Europäische Union, Springer, 2020.