Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge

Dr Bertram is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge, Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance (CEENRG), funded by the Carlsberg Foundation.

Her research investigates the EU’s trade and environmental policies, namely climate provisions in its preferential trade agreements and its autonomous trade-environmental instruments. She also works on the intersection between international climate and economic governance, in particular interlinkages between the Paris Agreement and trade policy. More broadly, Dr Bertram is interested in international cooperation, institutional design, regime interactions, and international political economy.

She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen and have previously been a visiting researcher at Ghent University. Also, she has been part of Oxford University’s Europaeum Scholars Programme for doctoral candidates.

In her PhD, Dr Bertram analysed trade and sustainable development (TSD) provisions in the EU’s preferential trade agreements, with a particular focus on climate aspects and the drive for more robust enforcement. The research combined elements from social constructivism, poststructuralism, foreign policy analysis, doctrinal analysis, and social network analysis to offer a more nuanced understanding of these provisions.

In her postdoctoral research, Dr Bertram extended this focus to the EU’s autonomous trade-environmental instruments from the perspective of the Global South, specifically the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism and deforestation regulation. These policies have sparked immense political resistance, which she investigates by applying a layered, cross-domain approach that goes beyond surface-level variables (economic impact and strategic discourse) to chart the nuances in Global South partners’ political objections and attitudes toward these policies.

Prior to her academic career, Dr Bertram held positions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, the Danish Parliament, and the Ministry of Taxation in Denmark, working on EU affairs, trade policy, and international climate policy.