Tainá E. Siman joined the Center for International Relations as a research associate at the University of Freiburg in May 2024. She has been working in the DFG-funded project "Comparing Forest Governance Performances of Regional Regimes: A Comprehensive Analysis" since October 2023. In her doctoral project, she focuses on the reasons behind the adoption of democracy clauses on a comparative basis. 

At the moment, Tainá is also a post-graduate student in Development, Public Policy and Regional Integration at the Latin American Faculty of Social Science (FLACSO Argentina). She was previously a research intern at UNU CRIS (United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies) in the cluster Regions and Cities Governance Lab (Re-LAB), supervised by Frank Mattheis.  

She studied International Relations at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, writing her master's thesis on non-traditional actors' strategies to interfere and influence decision-making in Mercosur. Her previous experiences include a semester of academic mobility at Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona during her Bachelor studies at Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, which concluded with an undergraduate research scholarship on the free trade agreement between COMESA-SADC-EAC, funded by FAPEMIG (Minas Gerais Research Foundation). 

She is also a member of GRIDALE (Grupo de Reflexión sobre Integración y Desarollo em América Latina y Europa) and the Regionalism Observatory (São Paulo, Brazil). 

Research interests 

• Comparative Regionalism 
• Regional Integration 
• Institutional Design 
• Governance 
• Decision-Making Processes 
• Integration Theory 
• Policy Transfer 

Publications

• Tainá Siman (2023): Non-democracy tolerance: Venezuela in Mercosur and Hungary in the European Union. Region and Cohesion. Vol. 13, No. 2, 105-118.
• Frank Mattheis, Tainá Siman (2023): Maritime Regional Security Governance in the Atlantic: Antagonisms, Overlaps and Cooperation. IDN Nação e Defesa, No. 164, 9-22. 
• João Vitor da Motta, Tainá Siman (2021): Dimensão humana e social do Mercosul da institucionalização ao esvaziamento. Brazilian Journal of International Relations. Vol. 10, No 1, 253-276.
• Tainá Siman (2021): Regionalizações durante o período ditatorial brasileiro. Brazilian Journal of Latin American Studies. Vol. 20, No.39, 318-342.
• Tainá Siman (2020): O papel da governança das instituições consultivas: União Europeia e Mercosul. RSTPR (Revista de la Secretaría del Tribunal Permanente de Revisión de Mercosur), Vol. 8, No. 16, 204-223.

Blogposts

• Tainá Siman (2022): The Escazu Agreement: Latin America’s Regional Take on Climate Change. Connecting Ideas, UNU CRIS.