Joana Setzer

Joana Setzer is an Associate Professorial Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She is the Co-Lead for Mobilising Political, Legal and Governance Systems at the Global School of Sustainability at LSE. Her main areas of expertise are climate litigation and global environmental governance.

Since 2013 she has been involved, and since 2020 she leads the Grantham Research Institute’s Climate Change Laws of the World project – the most comprehensive global resource on climate policy and legislation.

Joana served as a Contributing Author for Working Group 3 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Review (IPCC AR6). She regularly advises a range of international, governments and non-governmental organisations. She is a frequent speaker at academic and non-academic events, and a regular source for media outlets. Joana is also Co-Chair of the Climate Accountability working group of the Climate Social Science Network. In March 2026 Joana became an Associate Member of Cornerstone Barristers.

Joana was a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow (2016-2019). She holds a PhD (2014) and an MSc in Environment and Development from the LSE (2009), a Masters in Environmental Science from the University of Sao Paulo (2007), and an BA in Law from the Catholic University of Sao Paulo (2001). Prior to joining LSE, she worked as an environmental lawyer in Brazil, and served as the external affairs coordinator of Regions4, a network that represents subnational governments at the international level in the field of sustainable development.