Christian Flachsland is Assistant Professor of Climate and Energy Governance at the Hertie School of Governance. His research focuses on climate and energy policy options across different levels of governance. Flachsland is also head of the governance working group at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC). He previously co-led the working group Assessments and Scientific Policy Advice at MCC, and was a contributing author to the Fifth Assessment on the Mitigation of Climate Change by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He studied sociology, economics and philosophy at Potsdam University and was a PhD student at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). He earned his PhD from the TU Berlin in 2010.