Global Europe Lab

Since 2021, Leonie Stamm has been a Research Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Berlin. Her work focuses on gender and feminist approaches in foreign and security policy, including the “Women, Peace and Security” agenda as well as feminist foreign and development policy. In addition, she coordinates the study groups “Strategic Issues,” “European Policy,” and “Global Future Issues.” These groups bring together members of the German Bundestag, ministry officials, and representatives of the foreign policy community for confidential discussions. Their aim is to foster debate on strategic questions of German and European positions and to develop concrete policy options.

Dorothée Falkenberg is Programme Manager at the Brussels office of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs/”Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik” (SWP). Her research focuses on economic security within the thematic working group economic and technological transformations and her fellowship at the Bundeskanzler-Helmut-Schmidt Stiftung. She completed her M.A. in European Studies at KU Leuven and holds a B.A. in Political Science and Law from Leuphana University, with an Erasmus+ exchange at the University of Edinburgh. She worked previously at the European Parliamentary Research Service in the External Policies Unit and at the Bundeskanzler-Helmut-Schmidt-Stiftung in programs focused on global markets, social justice, and European and international politics.

Hello, my name is Lea (Holst). I am originally from Hamburg, Germany, where I also currently live and work. I am part of the BKHS team working on the “Inclusive Geoeconomics” project, which aims to link discussions about the changing international economic order – and the role of the EU in it – with societal goals of social justice. I have an educational background in International Relations and Peace and Security Studies, so I am used to interdisciplinary approaches that aim to “break down silos”. In the past, I have worked in various roles in civil society, focusing on human rights and gender issues – areas in which I also volunteer.

I am a legal researcher currently living and studying in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. I am pursuing a PhD at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), where I am a Research Fellow at the Jean Monnet Center of Excellence. In the spring of 2026, I will begin a period as a visiting doctoral researcher at Université Paris Cité, France. My doctoral thesis focuses on sustainable investments in a just energy transition. I concentrate, in particular, on the European context, exploring the role and importance of energy communities. This research reflects my interest in how law can drive positive and equitable change in the global energy landscape. I completed my master’s degree in European and International Law at the Universität des Saarlandes in Germany. I also hold a bachelor’s degree in Public Policy and Management from the Federal University of Ceará in Brazil.

I was born in 1994 and grew up in Kassel. After completing my law studies and first state examination at Philipps University in Marburg, including a year abroad at the Université Paris Sud, I moved to Essen for my legal traineeship. Alongside the second state examination, I worked part-time at a university chair and in a law firm focusing on labor law. In 2023, I joined the Joachim Herz Doctoral School at Leuphana University. Encouraged by my doctoral supervisor, I ventured into constitutional and competition law, even though these were not my initial areas of expertise. In my dissertation, I examine the relationship between constitutional and competition law in the context of digitalization. More broadly, I am interested in the intersections of constitutional law, economic regulation, and societal change.

Aditi Mukund is a German Chancellor Fellow with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, based at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi), Berlin. She is a researcher focusing on climate, security and foreign policy, gender, and inclusive global governance. Her regional focus includes India-Germany and India-EU relations, the Indian Ocean and the Indo-Pacific. She co-chairs Generation EU-India (GenEI), a youth network aimed at fostering people-to-people relations between young Europeans and Indians across policy areas.

Working at the point of intersection of politics, culture and law in an international environment has always been one of my core interests. This motivated me to pursue a career that encompasses all these different fields: after graduating in Public Law (LL.B.), I spend various years working at a cultural institution, the Munich City Library, while simultaneously pursuing a double-degree master in International Relations/Governance (MA). Living and working in Peru, Spain, Paraguay and Hungary allowed me to gain valuable experiences in different working contexts and also to deepen my language skills. To synthesize my interest for foreign languages, politics and culture, I joined the diplomatic corps in 2022. At our HQ in Berlin, I am responsible for coordinating Germany’s cultural and societal cooperation with Southeast Asia, the Pacific and China – a role that I find particularly intriguing given the cultural diversity of the region and its demographic, geopolitical and economic clout.

Julian Sadeghi is a journalist at Die Zeit in Berlin, covering politics, law, and economics. He previously wrote for the culture department of die tageszeitung (taz) and for a student newspaper. He finished his law studies at the Free University of Berlin and Radboud University Nijmegen (German State Exam, LL.B.), focusing on European and International law, as well as German constitutional law. He also spent a year in India.

Rachel is a Multimedia Journalist, Presenter and Editor at Deutsche Welle. Her mission is to turn underreported realities into powerful stories that stick. Her reports focus on Human Rights, Policy, Diplomacy, Neocolonialism, Indigenous people, Climate Change, and Food Security.

Rachel Nduati is a journalist from Kenya with a background in international media and communication studies. She has worked in multiple DW offices including Nairobi, Kampala, Berlin and Washington. She is fluent in English, German, Kiswahili, Kikuyu and is currently learning Spanish Before working for DW, she reported across East and Southern Africa, deconstructing various stereotypes about the continent.

Katrin C. Mueller currently pursues an interdisciplinary PhD project (working title: “Mapping Crosslinguistic Legal Transplants in the EU”) as a Joachim Herz Doctoral Fellow at Leuphana University Lueneburg, Germany. The project is situated at the crossroads of legal theory, comparative law, EU law and legal linguistics. Katrin also investigates the relationship of law and language, especially in multilingual environments, and the construction of legal meaning. She has presented conference papers inter alia in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Czechia. Prior to her PhD studies, Katrin obtained degrees in law and English linguistics and literature from Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany, and studied and worked across Germany, the U.K. and Singapore. As a qualified lawyer (Germany), Katrin’s research draws from practical experience in transnational business, corporate and finance law. 

Erriketi Tla da Silva is a Research and Development Specialist at the Luxembourg Centre for European Law at the University of Luxembourg and a PhD candidate at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, where her research focuses on the development of a principle of non-regression in EU environmental law. Before joining the University of Luxembourg, she served as an Academic Assistant in the Department of European Legal Studies at the College of Europe in Bruges.

Erriketi holds an LL.M. in EU Law from the College of Europe and an LL.M. in Environmental Law from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She is a qualified lawyer registered in the Athens Bar Association. Her academic interests include environmental law as well as procedural and constitutional aspects of EU law.

Dr. Verena Kahl is a research associate at the University of Hamburg, where she works in the fields of public international law, human rights and international environmental and climate law. She studied law at Kiel University and completed an LL.M. in International Law and Human Rights at the UN-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica. From 2015 to 2018, she worked as a junior lawyer and integrated GIZ expert at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José. In 2022, she was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at NYU’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.

Her research focuses particularly on international and regional human rights protection, climate and environmental law, and feminist and decolonial approaches to international law. In 2025, she completed her doctorate on “The Right to a Safe Climate: Leading Human Rights Law into the Anthropocene” at the University of Hamburg. The dissertation was awarded summa cum laude and received the Faculty of Law’s 2026 Doctoral Dissertation Prize.