Position 
PhD Fellow
Nationality 
Canada
At UNU-CRIS 
01/11/2023 to 29/02/2024
Biographical Statement 

Brett Manzer was a  PhD Fellow at UNU-CRIS. Brett holds a BA in International Affairs from Vesalius College and an MA in Political Science from McGill University. Brett is currently a doctoral candidate in Political Science at Université Laval in Quebec, Canada. Her main research interests are sub-state regions’ international relations (also known as paradiplomacy) and their actorness in global governance. Her dissertation “Closing the (Para)diplomatic Gap?” uses Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and process-tracing to map paradiplomacy (non)occurrence and identify its causal conditions. Brett is also co-authoring a research article, “Neither State nor Non-State: Conceptualising the Agency of Sub-State Governments in Global Governance.”

Brett was previously a visiting research student at the University of Antwerp and Université catholique de Louvain, during which time she conducted elite interviews with Belgian and foreign (para)diplomatic practitioners and policymakers. 

During her previous internship at UNU-CRIS, she contributed to the Regions and Cities Governance Lab (Re-LAB) under the supervision of Frank Mattheis and Jamie Pring, specifically its research streams on paradiplomacy and the international actorness of sub-state regions and cities.

Brett’s doctoral research has been funded by a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGS) and a Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement (MSFSS) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), as well as a Mitacs Globalink Research Award in partnership with Wallonie-Bruxelles International (WBI).