Research Areas:

Energy Justice and Sustainability of Energy Systems, Glacierized environments, Social Movements and Collective Action, Degrowth,

Research

My research solely focuses on the question of politics of transformative change as well as the political agency of change. So far sustainability researchers have focused largely on policy: what it is and what it could/should be. There are several academic articles on the compatibility, design of energy, climate, food, water policies and instruments. However, much less attention is devoted to the political circumstances that make transformative change and the adoption of such policies likely. In order to fill this gap in the field, I explore collective movements for sustainability with the following research projects: Citizen municipalism in Barcelona and Renewable energy cooperativism in South Lalitpur, Nepal. My overall aim is to understand political opportunity structures that citizen collective action is developed in different contexts and document practices of ‘everyday politics’ such as direct democracy and participatory budgeting for mobilizing political capital as a response to their ‘everyday’ sustainability challenges. 

Throughout my studies, I also rework the concepts of political community and ecological citizenship which refers to a ‘new politics of obligation’, according to which human beings have obligations to animals, trees, mountains, oceans, and other members of the biotic community. At the center of my theoretical exploration is the firm belief that conventional conceptions of justice and citizenship do not provide the human species with an adequate set of tools for resolving the difficulties created by ecological challenges today. In line with this interest, I took part in the international effort to develop methodological framework for pluralistic valuation of nature in the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

Research Projects

NATURICE

Exploring plural values of human-nature relationships in glacierized environments.

The project is funded by Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development (FORMAS) and will deliver high quality research along with relevant policy recommendations. The project responds to FORMAS’ call for integrated knowledge of climate change, ecosystems and society, and addresses the need for in-depth study of the human-nature relationship by crossing boundaries between different research fields ecosystem services and valuation, political ecology and glaciology.

Around the world, glaciers have been retreating at unprecedented rates. Glaciers affect people and societalrelations worldwide on many levels, whether by influencing mountain ecosystems, providing water fordrinking and agriculture, generating hydroelectric energy, determining safety for downstream communities, ordriving tourism economies and other types of livelihoods. Thisproject’s main purpose is to examine how values and human-nature relationships are affected by these challenges through a trans-regional study of glacierized environments in Scandinavia and the Himalayas.

This project is leading a key research theme at LUCSUS called Glacierized environments.

Post-growth welfare systems

Funded by Lund University Agenda 2030

Welfare systems in OECD countries including Sweden face combined challenges such as rising inequality, demographic changes and environmental crises that are likely to drive up welfare demand. Economic growth is no longer a sustainable solution to these problems, since only very few countries have managed to decouple economic growth from ecological footprints and greenhouse gas emissions, and even where this has been achieved, the rates of emission decline are too slow to match the Paris climate targets. It is therefore imperative to consider how welfare systems may cope with the mentioned challenges in the absence of economic growth.

This project applies methodological pluralism, building on literature and policy reviews, statistical analyses, scenario building and expert forums. Based on cooperation with local, national and European stakeholders as well as with an International Academic Advisory Board featuring some the world’s leading experts in the field, this project develops and assesses ways of decoupling welfare from economic growth by focusing both on the ‘supply’ (fiscal and taxation-related) and ‘demand’ (labour market, health and care sector, community, education and environmental and spatial planning-related) aspects of welfare provision. The project brings together researchers from Social Sciences (Prof Max Koch, max [dot] koch [at] soch [dot] lu [dot] se, and Dr Mine Islar, Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies, mine [dot] islar [at] lucsus [dot] lu [dot] se),  Environmentalscience (Dr Johanna Alkan Olsson, johanna [dot] alkan_olsson [at] cec [dot] lu [dot] se) and Economics and Management (Dr Alexander Paulsson, alexander [dot] paulsson [at] fek [dot] lu [dot] se). 

Double transitions of energy in Nepal

Funded by VR Development grant (2023-2027)

The purpose of the project is to advance knowledge on the relationships between energy transition and energy access in the context of Nepal. Energy transition in Nepal runs along two parallel processes: a transition from low-access to high access to modern energy for meeting the demands of the population, and a transition from fossil-fuel based energy to renewable energy. However, little has been known about how these two processes relate to each other. By defining access as the ability to derive benefits from energy sources, we aim to identify the differentiated patterns of means, relations, and processes that enable/disable small businesses and households’ opportunities to have access, alleviate poverty and derive benefits from energy transition.

Ecological citizen and politicization after the right to the city movements

Funded by VR (2015-2018) 

 It aims to analyze the impact of contemporary movements in Europe in creating collective citizen initiatives and inclusive societies. The project results are documented by three publications (one recently published, two are upcoming). Project findings aim to contribute to a deepened understanding of politicization, especially in the aftermath of significant social movements, such as occupy movements. I documented the differences between ‘everyday makers’ and ‘expert citizens’ in citizen initiatives and their significance in sustaining a transformative change through the case of citizen municipalism in Barcelona. Another finding of the project is the alliance building between citizen initiatives and different sectors. Here I show strategies and examples of co-production of municipal policies in the context of energy, climate and gender together with activists and key people in respective sectors

Teaching

MESS 34 Governance for Sustainability (7,5 credits),Lund University Master Programme in Environmental Science and Sustainabillity (LUMES).

MESS 56 Popular Culture (7,5 credits), Lund University Master Programme in Environmental Science and Sustainabillity (LUMES).

PhD Course Degrowth and Sustainability Studies, Lund University Agenda 2030 School