Andrea Valente is Assistant Professor of International Relations at ISCSP – Universidade de Lisboa, where she teaches at undergraduate, Master's and doctoral level in the areas of Geopolitics, Global Governance, China and the Asia-Pacific, Africa in the International System, Transnational Civil Society, and Great Power Foreign Policy. She is Vice-President of the Instituto do Oriente (FCT-registered research unit) and Vice-Director of the Colégio Tropical at ULisboa, and a member of the Scientific Committee of the Doctoral Programme in Planetary Health Studies, in which she co-coordinates the Specialisation in Politics and Governance. Her research sits at the intersection of international relations, global governance, and sustainability. She examines non-traditional security threats — food security, energy security, and the governance of critical supply chains — through the lens of great power competition and the international relations of Asia and Africa. A central concern of her work is the political economy of sustainability transitions: how the shift towards greener and more sustainable economies reshapes decision-making processes, redistributes power and costs across actors and regions, and generates new forms of conditionality and normative conflict in global governance. This nexus between economy, environment and society — and its implications for states, institutions and communities in the Global South — runs through her research on EU and Chinese engagement in Africa and Asia, as well as her work on planetary health governance. Recent publications include chapters in the Palgrave Handbook on China-Europe-Africa Relations (2024), and the Handbook on Climate Change and Environmental Governance in China (Edward Elgar, 2024). She has produced policy-relevant research for UNESCAP (2022) and the G7+ Foundation (2023), and since February 2026 has been a member of the AU-EU IRC FNSSA Policy Think Tank on Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture. Alongside her academic work, she has extensive experience at the interface between research and policy. Between 2020 and 2025, she collaborated with AICEP – the Portuguese Agency for Investment and Foreign Trade, initially as a consultant and subsequently, from 2022, in a formal ESG and Sustainability advisory role, advising on global value chain transformations and supply chain vulnerabilities. Her research combines systematic documentary analysis with fieldwork and interviews across Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, drawing on networks built through EU projects, and long-standing academic partnerships with Asian and African institutions.