Simon Happersberger is a visiting PhD candidate at the Canada Research Chair in International Political Economy and PhD candidate in political science at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He is PhD fellow at the FWO Research Foundation Flanders and PhD fellow at the UN University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies. His research focuses on the interactions between political economy and environmental politics, in particular he is interested in the effectiveness of policy instruments on environmentally sustainable trade. Simon holds a master’s degree in Political Science from Freie Universität Berlin as well as a Dual Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and German Philology from University of Göttingen. Prior to his Phd, he collected first professional experiences at the Secretariat of the European Parliament, the German Institute for International Affairs and the German Federal Foreign Office.