Karin Steen

Research Areas

My main research interests are gender, development and sustainabilty. My geographical focus is sub-Saharan Africa and especially Zimbabwe. I am also interested in feminist theory in sustainability studies.

Current Research

My current research explores the importance of love, as an emotion, for understanding vulnerability, sustainability and development. Love is a perfect place to study power. I investigate how love and power in intimate contracts influence gendered resource management in agricultural production. I aim at identifying strategies that contribute to strengthen women's rights to resources, especially land and labour. My PhD thesis focused on Zimbabwe and I have continued with this regional focus.

My research, current and previous, aims at understanding the dynamics of gender and social change. In my research I use qualitative methods, such as different kinds of interviews and observations, and draw on gender and institutional theories, which recognise power and discursive signs of institutional change.

In previous research I have focused on gender aspects of processes of social and institutional change, mainly in relation to issues of land and labour. I study the social aspects of land where I focus on the importance of land in how gender is enacted in everyday strategies and constructed in terms of identities. My previous research was guided by the research question: to what extent is the gendered organisation and management of labour and land in subsistence farming a constraining or enabling factor for achieving food security? PhD Thesis: Time to farm

Further, I am interested in qualitative methodology and ways to grasp social change. In this aspect I am interested in how social constructivism and grounded theory can be used to study institutional change.

Read more about my latest research project in Formas' online magazine Extract (in Swedish):

http://www.extrakt.se/karlek-kan-gynna-hallbar-utveckling/

Teaching

My teaching is mainly in the fields of gender, development and sustainabilty. Most of my teaching is at multi-disciplinary international profile Masters in Development, Master in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science, and Bachelour in Development. I am a tutor for students at bachelor level and master level. I am the DIrecror of studies for LUMES at LUCSUS and the Director for the Master of Science in Development at Graduate School at the social sceince faculty at Lund University.