Institute at Brown for Environment and Society

Fred Shaia is a political scientist and Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in Environment and Society. He is writing a book on climate change diplomacy in the United Nations (1972-2022), drawing on archival, interview, and ethnographic data collected from nearly 20 countries across six continents. Fred is an expert on the politics of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), having observed hundreds of hours of negotiations at nine summits. Fred’s work has been published in Global Environmental Politics and has received support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, among others. He has held visiting positions at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG) in Cologne, the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, and Ashoka University in New Delhi. Fred holds an A.M. and a Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Brown University, where he was a Presidential Fellow. Before Brown, he received an M.P.P. from Harvard University and spent several years working for international organizations.