Emily Christine Cowan

Dr. Emily Cowan is a Senior Scientist at SINTEF Ocean.

Education

Cowan received her MA in European Studies from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in 2020 with the title: “The Price of Plastic: Analysing the actors that influenced the EU’s Single-Use Plastic Directive, 2004-19”. She also received her Dr. Philos degree from NTNU in 2025 entiled: "Orchestrating a Global Plastics Agreement: Understanding the Actors in the Negotiating Arena with an Arctic Case Study on the Road to End Plastic Pollution".

Competence and research areas

Cowan's expertise in the social and political sciences fits well with transdisciplinary research projects. Her areas of focus are plastics and Arctic multi-level governance. She works on a variety of EU and NFR projects, where she holds stakeholder-driven workshops focusing on perceptions and scenario development to identify pathways forward for policymakers. Her doctoral thesis was centred around the UN plastic treaty negotiations, where she used the methodological approach of Event Ethnography

Linkedin

https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilychristinecowan

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3550-0449