Frederik Kamphues

Frederik Kamphues has been a research assistant in the Human Geography working group with a focus on economic geography since March 2025. He is doing his doctorate in the project on sustainability governance of global value chains funded by the state of Lower Saxony and the Volkswagen Foundation.

After completing his dual-subject Bachelor's degree in Geography and Business Administration and Economics and a semester abroad at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa, he successfully completed his Master's degree in Economic and Social Geography at Osnabrück University. In his Master's thesis, Frederik compared the integration of small farmers from Ghana and Costa Rica into the global cocoa production network. To this end, he collected qualitative and quantitative data from and with smallholder farmers in both Ghana and Costa Rica over a period of several months. After graduating, he worked for two years at management consultancies, where he dealt with the implementation of various sustainability reporting obligations such as CSRD.

In his doctoral project, Frederik deals with the effects of various sustainability legislations such as the Supply Chain Sustainability Obligations Act (LkSG) or the EU Deforestation Regulation on global agri-food networks. A particular focus here is on changes to human rights and environmental standards for producers in countries of the Global South. In addition, research is also being conducted into the extent to which the implementation of technical infrastructures (e.g. blockchain technologies) can improve the traceability of agricultural products and thus the sustainability governance of global value chains.