Areas of Interest: International environmental politics; global governance; environment and development; firm environmental decisionmaking and performance; social movements; climate change and energy policy in the United States, European Union, Brazil, India, and Mexico.
Simone Pulver is the Joukowsky Family Assistant Professor (Research) of International Studies at the Watson Institute, focusing on global environmental policy. She has a joint appointment as an assistant professor of environmental studies in Brown’s Center for Environmental Studies. Pulver also holds an appointment as an adjunct assistant professor of sociology at Brown.
Her current research investigates the participation of developing-country firms in India and Brazil in the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism and the use of scenarios in global environmental governance. In the past, her work has focused on the roles played by transnational oil corporations and transnational environmental advocacy NGOs in the UN climate negotiations. She is finalizing a book manuscript on this topic, tentatively titled "Private Interest versus Public Debate: Two Logics of Influence in the Global Climate Change Negotiations, 1991-2005.”
Pulver joined the faculty of the Watson Institute in 2003. She received her doctorate in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley and also holds an MA in energy and resources from UC Berkeley, as well as a BA in physics from Princeton University.
Pulver teaches courses on International Environmental Politics and Environment and Development , and has advised undergraduate and master’s theses in international relations, environmental studies, development studies, and Latin American studies. She is also the advisor for the Global Environment track within the International Relations concentration.