Dr. Sebastian Sewerin

Sebastian Sewerin was a senior researcher and lecturer with the Energy and Technology Policy Group from October 2015 to 2023. He explored countries’ low-​carbon energy policy mixes, thinking about ways to conceptualize and measure policy change in a systematic and comparable way. He is particularly interested in understanding policy dynamics and the underlying interaction between policy output, policy effects and subsequent politics in long-term policy feedback loops. To this end, he aims to bring together theories and concepts from political science (policy change, policy feedback, policy design) and innovation studies (technology characteristics) to better understand the co-evolution of policy and technology. His projects included a comparative study of countries’ policy design approaches regarding lithium-ion battery manufacturing. Sebastian also contributes to international organizations’ reports like the UN Environment’s recent external page 6^th Global Environment Outlook.

Sebastian’s research is published with Oxford University Press and in journals like Nature Energy, Policy Studies Journal, Policy Sciences, Research Policy and Climate Policy, and focuses on developed countries’ low-​carbon energy policy and politics.  

Sebastian holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of external page Cologne`s Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Science. He obtained a Master’s degree in Political Science, Medieval and Modern History and Anglo-American History, also from the University of Cologne. Sebastian worked as a research fellow at the external page Cologne Center for Comparative Politics and the external page Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy. During his PhD and Postdoc research, he spent time as a visiting scholar at Yale University’s external page School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences, the external page Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy (University of Saskatchewan), and the external page Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the external page University of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences.

In his free time, he wonders why anyone would be interested in what he is doing in his free time.