About me



I am Assistant Professor with the Public Administration and Policy Group of Wageningen University since 2011. I also hold an honorary position as Adjunct Professor in Global Environmental Governance with the University of Helsinki, Finland. 

As a teacher I strive to give both natural and social science students opportunities to understand the actors, mechanisms and processes of global governance and to reflect on what role they could have in such processes.  

As a researcher I try to understand what makes global public governance legitimate and through what processes. I look both at the role of international norms and organisations and sources for their legitimacy such as inclusiveness, transparency, accountability and equity. In my research I engage with explanatory and normative theories from international relations and political science and my empirical focus is on global climate, biodiversity and sustainable development governance. 

Before I came to Wageningen I studied and worked in several countries starting in my country of birth, Sweden. I have a master’s degree in biology from Uppsala University and a PhD in political science from Linköping University. I did a post doc at Yale University (2003/2004), was an Academy Research Fellow at Turku University in Finland (2006-2011) and a visiting research fellow in Leiden University (2009-2010). in postdoctoral or research fellow at some American (Yale) and European universities (Turku, Leiden).

As a researcher who is also an engaged citizen I engage in the active justification of global public governance in various ways including writing policy briefs and globas but also working with others in various capacities such as:

  • Member of the working group for elaborating on winning proposal for reforming global governance of the Global Change Foundation
  • Serving on the board of One World Trust - a UK based research NGO that seeks to strengthen accountability in global governance and the rule of international law, see www.oneworldtrust.org
  • Serving on the board of the International Environment Forum - a Bahá'í inspired organisation for environment and sustainability
  • Serving on the Steering Committee of the Research and Independent Non-Governmental Organizations (RINGOs); a constituency of observer organizations towards the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change (UNFCCC), see www.ringos.net
  • Appointed member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) task force on scenarios and models, see https://www.ipbes.net/scenarios-models-phase-2-experts  
  • Member of Climate Strategies Climate Strategies is a not-for-profit organisation working with an international network of senior climate change policy experts to bridge the gap. between research and policy, see www.climatestrategies.org

Bio (104 words): Sylvia Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen is Assistant Professor with the Public Administration and Policy Group of Wageningen University, the Netherlands. In her research she seeks to understand the key determinants of what makes global public governance processes exert influence and build legitimacy where issues such as transparency, participation, accountability and equity are important. She has published in the domains of global energy, climate change, biodiversity and sustainable development governance. She is a member of the IPBES Expert Group on Scenarios and Modelling. a Senior Research Fellow of the Earth System Governance project and serves on the board of the One World Trust and the International Environment Forum.