Sigrid Winkler started in August 2006 as a PhD researcher at the Institute for European Studies (IES) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). She has since been working on the IES project “The European Union Policy on Greater China”. In her research she is generally interested in the European Union's interaction with Taiwan and China. In her dissertation she specifically looks into how the conflicting strategies of Taiwan and the EU concerning Taiwan’s sovereignty in international organizations are influenced by Taiwan’s domestic constraints and the framework of the international system. She has also organized events such as the workshop “Corporate Social Responsibility in China in the Light of the 2008 Olympic Games” at the IES.

Sigrid Winkler studied Political Science (MA) and Chinese Studies (BA) at Vienna University in Austria. She graduated from Political Science in June 2005 with her diploma thesis “The Functioning of EU Foreign Policy. The Case of China.” In 2003/04 she completed a one-year ERASMUS scholarship at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Bordeaux, France. In 2005/06 she studied Chinese for one year at the Renmin University of China in Beijing. From February to October 2008 she was hosted as a visiting fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies (CCS) in Taipei, Taiwan, where she also continued her Chinese language studies at the National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU).