C.M. Weinhardt

Clara Weinhardt is Assistant Professor in International Relations at Maastricht University and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin.

Her research interests combine questions of global governance with theoretical approaches to international negotiations, with a particular focus on the areas of trade and development. Her empirical research focuses on EU-Africa relations and rising powers, especially China, and WTO politics.

Clara Weinhardt is Deputy Coordinator of the Horizon project ENSURED on how the EU and its members can transform global governance. She also pursues an NWO XS project on "The geo-economic turn in world politics: how regions beyond the West respond to great power rivalry" (2024-25). She was also awarded a DFG research grant for her project 'The Rise of Emerging Powers: A Challenge to Norms of Differential Treatment for Developing Countries?' (2019-2022), as a joint project with researchers at the University of St. Gallen (funded by SNF). 

She is currently board member of the political economy section of the German Political Sciences Association (since 2022). She is also a Programm Committee member of the Political Economy of Aid and Development Society (PEADS) (since 2024) and a member of the board of editors of the Journal of International Trade Law and Policy (since 2024). 

In 2013, she completed her PhD in International Relations at the University of Oxford. It examined the negotiations of Economic Partnership Agreements between the EU and West Africa. In 2021, she was awarded the Early Career Award by the Diplomatic Studies Section of the International Studies Association.

Her work appeared among others in International Affairs, International Studies Quarterly, Review of International Political Economy, Journal of Common Market Studies, Third World Quarterly, Routledge’s International Political Economy Series and with Cambridge University Press.