Dr Christian Downie is an Associate Professor and Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow (2018-2021) in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University. He was previously a Vice Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of New South Wales.

Christian has worked as a foreign policy advisor to the Australian Government’s Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and a climate policy advisor to the Department of Climate Change. Christian holds a PhD in international relations and political science from the Australian National University, having graduated from the University of Sydney with first class honours in economics.

He has spent time teaching or researching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Balsillie School of International Affairs among others, and he has worked in policy think tanks in Canberra and Washington D.C.

Christian is the author of more than 20 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters including publications in Global Environmental Politics, Energy Policy, Global Governance, International Affairs, and Third World Quarterly. His latest book, Business Battles in the U.S. Energy Sector, will be published in 2019.

For more information and list of publications visit his personal website.

Research interests

• International Relations
• Environmental Politics

Available student projects

I am always eager to hear from Masters and PhD students who have an interest in working on projects in the following areas:

• Global energy policy
• Global climate change policy
• US energy policy
• The G20
• Business actors and clean energy transitions

Please do feel free to get in contact if you would like to pursue further study in any of these areas and to see whether I would be a suitable supervisor.

However, before you do, please check your eligibility to pursue a Master of Philosophy or PhD at the ANU.