Mara Wendebourg is a postdoctoral researcher with the  GLOBALGOALS project at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University. Her main research focuses on the institutional reforms and legalization of global sustainability governance. Alongside her research, Mara co-organized the GLOBALGOALS2024 Conference and co-designed and taught the GLOBALGOALS2024 Summer School. Mara is also a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature World Commission on Environmental Law (IUCN WCEL) and a research fellow at the Earth Systems Governance (ESG) Network, where she is a member of the SDG taskforce, carbon removal working group, ocean governance taskforce and ESG Law taskforce. 

Mara received her doctorate in public international law from the Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London in July 2024. She wrote her thesis on Scientific Advisory Bodies as Actors of Norm Diffusion in International Environmental Law-Making. Her research examined how scientific advisory bodies to international conventions influence law-making through norm diffusion across different legal regimes. Her doctoral research was funded by the London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership. In addition, Mara was awarded the Modern Law Review scholarship in 2022 and 2023. 

During her doctoral research, Mara also volunteered at the Advisory Committee on the Protection of the Sea (ACOPS), following meetings of the Marine Environmental Protection Committee of the International Maritime Organization. Prior to that, Mara was a trainee at the European Commission and interned at the International Seabed Authority. She holds an LLM in Public International Law from Utrecht University, an MSc in Marine Systems and Policies from the University of Edinburgh, and a BSc from the University College Utrecht.