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Faculty & Staff

Areas of Expertise

Global governance, international organizations and their performance, climate change governance, United States foreign environmental policy, United Nations reform, sustainability on campuses and in organizations, roles of individuals in organizations and institutions

Degrees

PhD, Yale University

Professional Publications & Contributions

• “UNEP in Global Environmental Governance: Design, Leadership, Location,” in Global Environmental Politics, 2010, Vol. 8, Issue 1, pp.30-59.
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  "UNEP as Anchor Organization for the Global Environment,” in International Organizations in Global Environmental Governance (Frank Biermann, Bernd Siebenhuener, and Anna Schreyögg eds.), Routledge, 2009.
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  “The US Constitution and the Global Environment,” Annenberg Teachers Institute: America’s Constitution and the World , National Constitution Center, Philadelphia, July 29, 2010.
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  “From Copenhagen to the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development: Global Governance for the Environment and Sustainable Development,” Discussion with French Environment Minister Chantal Jouanno at the United Nations, New York City, April 8, 2010.
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  International Environmental Governance: Where can civil society add value and how?” Global Major Groups and Stakeholders Forum, 11th Special Session of UNEP Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum, Bali, Indonesia, February 21, 2010.
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  “US Foreign Policy Challenges in 2010: Developing Countries Perspectives,” Wilson Center on the Hill , Washington, DC, January 15, 2010.

Additional Information

Maria Ivanova is an assistant professor of global governance at the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance at the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at UMass Boston. She is co-director of the Center for Governance and Sustainability and director of the Global Environmental Governance Project.

Ivanova is an international relations and environmental policy scholar specializing in governance and sustainability. She focuses on international organizations, US foreign environmental policy, UN reform, and sustainability on campuses and in organizations.

Her career, marked by teaching excellence and policy leadership, has bridged academia and policy. Her academic work analyzes the history and performance of the international environmental architecture and the evolution of US international environmental policy. Her policy work seeks to bring analytical rigor and innovative input to the international negotiations on reforming the UN system for environmental governance. Ivanova convened the 2009 Global Environmental Governance Forum in Glion, Switzerland gathering eighty environmental leaders from around the world, including the five successive executive directors of the United Nations Environment Programme. She was elected twice (in 2009 and 2010) to represent North American civil society at the UN Environment Programme’s Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum and was instrumental in the creation of the UNEP Civil Society Advisory Group on International Environmental Governance. She also served as coordinating lead author for the policy chapter of the landmark environmental assessment, Global Environmental Outlook (GEO-5), produced by UNEP.

From 2005 to 2010, Professor Ivanova was on the faculty at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. She was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 2009–2010. Previously, she worked at the Environment Directorate of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris and at the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency in Stockholm. She serves on the advisory boards of the Ecologic Institute in Berlin and of the World Transformation Initiatives. Ivanova is the recipient of the 2007 Professor of the Year Award (from Members 13, a student organization at the College of William and Mary), the 2010 Mary Lyon Award from Mount Holyoke College, and the 2010 Goddess Artemis Award from the Euro-American Women’s Council.

For more information on her research and publications, please visit Maria Ivanova's Scholarworks page.