Research Profile
Dr Peter H Feindt
Telephone:+44 (0)29 208 79310
Fax:+44 (0)29 208 74845
Address:Room 2.52, Glamorgan Building
Qualifications
Diploma (5 yr) (Economics, additional qualifications in Political Science and Philosophy), University of Hamburg (1993).
PhD (Social Sciences and Economics), Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg (2000).
Research Interests
Theoretical and empirical studies in environmental policy and planning, agricultural and rural policy, democracy and participation, multi-arena governance, political communication, and sustainability politics.
Selected Projects
- Biopatenting and animal breeding – applicability of patent law and recommendations for the future development of the regulatory and legislative framework
- Simulating and Evaluating a Better Regulation of Converging Technologies (SEBEROC)
- Climate Change in the Food Supply Chain - Framing, Discourse and Governance
- Review of current practices and criteria used to integrate environmental and social aspects into urban infrastructure development processes in cities in Europe
- AgChange. Conflicts of the New Agricultural Policy. Changing Relationship Between Society and Nature?
- Extending Organic Farming in Germany – Precondition, Strategies, Implications, Policy Options
- Participatory Monitoring of the Planning Process for the Modernization of the Hamburg Fair Trade Centre
Selected Publications
- The BSE Crisis in German Newspapers: Reframing Responsibility
- The Great Recession – A Transformative Moment for Planning
- The Recession, Environmental Policy and Ecological Modernization – What’s New about the Green New Deal?
- Biopatents – A Threat to the Use and Conservation of Agrobiodiversity?
- Environmental and Technology Conflicts
- Policy-Learning and Environmental Policy Integration in the Common Agricultural Policy, 1973-2003
- Policy Stretching and Institutional Layering: British Food Policy Between Security, Safety, Quality, Health and Climate Change
- Sustainable Agricultural Policy as Reflexive Agricultural Policy
- Politics and the Environment
- Reflexive Governance, Public Goods and Sustainability - Conceptual Reflections and Empirical Evidence in Agricultural Policy
- Models of Man and Behavior in Scientific Policy Advice. Opportunities and Limits of Interdisciplinary Dialogue
- Harmonization, Problem Pressure, Communication. Convergence in Agricultural Policies of OECD Countries, 1986-2004
- Does Discourse Matter? Discourse Analysis in Environmental Policy Making
Additional Information
Peter H. Feindt is an economist and political scientist by training. His PhD in Political Science discusses citizen participation and deliberative policy-making in the context of theories of democracy and governance, including extensive empirical research. Peter has received scholarships from the German National Academic Foundation and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), a fellowship at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, University of Bielefeld, and an Organic Farming Science Award 2006 from the Institute for Organic Farming of the Federal Agriculture Research Institute.
Since 1990 Peter has worked extensively as consultant, facilitator and mediator for public policy and planning projects and sustainability discourses. Clients he has worked for include the German Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, the German Federal Ministry of the Environment, the German Federal Parliament, the Senate of the City of Hamburg, the Schleswig-Holstein state government, the German Chemical Industry Trade Union and the German Chemical Industry Association, energy company HEW, University Kassel-Witzenhausen, and several local authorities.
2003 - 2006 Peter was member of the board of the Environmental Policy and Global Change section of the German Political Science Association (DVPW). Since 2006 he is member of the board of the Politics and Technology section of the German Political Science Association (DVPW). Since 2006 he is member of the Steering Committee of European DesertNet. Since 2005, Peter is member of the Advisory Council for Biodiversity and Genetic Resources at the Federal Ministry of Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture, since 2007 as vice chair.
Peter has been awarded or co-awarded grants totalling more than € 2 million (£1.5 million).
Latest News
A report on biopatenting by the Advisory Council for Biodiversity and Genetic Resources, with Peter as main author, was sent as an amicus curiae brief by the German Federal Minister for Agriculture to the European Patent Office (EPO). The Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO was about to decide on the patentability of essentially biological processes, an issue with wide ranging consequences for the control over plant and animal genetic resources. In response, the President of the EPO, Benoit Batistelli, invited the German Minister, Ilse Aigner, to discuss the report and subsequently published an opinion that was widely in favour of the position advocated in our report. In December, the Enlarged Board of Appeal decided in favour of the position advocated in our report.
In September 2010, Peter presented the findings of the report at a well-attended Symposium on Biopatents in Brussels. In December 2010, Peter served as an expert witness to the Agriculture Committee of the German Federal parliament which spent two hours with him to discuss the report. In January 2011, he was invited to discuss the findings with representatives from agriculture ministries from several EU member states. In March 2011, he was invited expert at an inter-departmental meeting of the German Federal Government to prepare a report to the German Federal Parliament, the Bundestag, on biopatents in food and agriculture.
Peter was the conference chair for the 6th International Conference in Interpretive Policy Analysis: Discursive Spaces. Politics, Practices and Power, which was hosted by the School and took place in June 2011. Please see the conference report here.