LUCSUS seminars

Spring programme 2025

The programme is updated continously. 

23 January 2025
Social-ecological systems modeling and scenario planning in the context of China. Case studies from (costal zones, basin, etc; from various scales)
Speaker: Yafei Wang
11.00-12.00, in Carson

30 January 2025 
Support for work in transition
Speaker: Felix Schulz (LUCSUS)
11.00-12.00, in Maathai

Abstract: In this seminar Felix Schulz will present his main research areas, which can be subsumed under the header “support for work in transition”. 
These include:

1. AI: transforming workers and workplaces
2. Labour and the just transition: worker and union perspectives
3. Public support for climate policies and their ideological predictors
4. Lost in transition? Untangling worker identities in a decarbonised future

6 February 2025
Who controls the future of agriculture? Investigation of the political economy of agriculture.
Speakers: Lennart Olsson (LUCSUS), Maria Lucchetta and Minahil Malik (Social Sciences Methods Centre)
11.00-12.00, in Maathai 

13 February 2025  *CANCELLED*
Protecting while promoting? Scrutinizing an agroindustry-led initiative for ‘safe use’ of pesticides in Uganda
Speakers: Elina Andersson and Ellinor Isgren (LUCSUS)
11.00-12.00, in Maathai 

13 March 2025
Climate change policies, do they motivate people to engage? Investigation of policies in five European cities
Speaker: Hannah Andersson ( LTH)  
11.00-12.00, in Carson

20 March 2025
Speaker: Torsten Krause   
11.00-12.00, in Maathai

17 April 2025
An environmental history of ecocide
Speaker: Santiago Gorostiza Langa
11.00-12.00, in Maathai 

Abstract: In this seminar, Santiago Gorostiza will present his research on environmental history and its connection to the FORMAS-funded project “From military to civil crime: an environmental history of ecocide”.

8 May 2025
Exploring Urban Transitions through Everyday Governance”
Speaker Glyn Williams (KEG)
11.00-12.00, in Maathai 

Abstract: 
In this seminar, Glyn Williams will be introducing some recent work undertaken through a British Academy grant on the impact of Covid on Urban Governance in India, and talking about his future ideas that look at the social and environmental transformations associated with rapid urban growth in the Global South. His work uses everyday governance as lens through which to critically evaluate current development interventions and practices, and to explore development alternatives that promote social, environmental and political inclusion

15 May 2025
The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It’s Too Late
Speaker: Wim Carton (LUCSUS)
11.00 - 12.00, in Maathai

Abstract: Warming is about to hit one and a half degrees, perhaps two degrees soon after. What do we do then? In the overshoot era, schemes abound for muscular adaptation or for turning the heat down at a later date, by means of technologies for removing CO2 from the air or blocking sunlight. Such technologies are by no means safe: they come with immense risks. Like magical promises of future redemption, they provide reasons for continuing emissions in the present. But do they also hold some potentials? Can climate breakdown be reversed, masked or simply adapted to, as their advocates promise? Or will any such diversions rather make things worse? The book that this talk is based on maps the new frontlines in the struggle for a liveable planet and insists on the climate revolution long overdue. In the end, no technologies can absolve us of its tasks.

22 May 2025
The role(s) of history in sustainability research
Speakers: Bregje van Veelen (LUCSUS) and Kristoffer Ekberg ( KEG)
11.00-12.00, in Carson

Abstract: In this seminar Kristoffer Ekberg and Bregje van Veelen will discuss their experiences of integrating historical perspectives in sustainability research. Kristoffer Ekberg is a historian by background who now works in Human Ecology, while Bregje van Veelen is currently collaborating with historians in a project on low-carbon transitions. In this seminar they will use their own experiences as a starting point to think through some of the following questions: What is the role of history in sustainability research? Is it all about 'learning from the past'? What other insights can historical research offer? And what are some of the challenges around integrating historical and contemporary perspectives?

5 June 2025
Speaker: Juan Antonio Samper (LUCSUS)
11.00-12.00, in Vandana.

Abstract:  The theory of affordances, initially proposed by Gibson (197X), has increasingly gained attention in mostly English-speaking social sciences. Affordances are defined as possibilities for action. It is a theoretical approach to perception and action that suggests that the environment itself contains information that can be directly perceived. In this seminar, I wish to share two things. First, some initial thoughts about affordances and in particular how some scholars have highlighted its vocation as an ecological social theory and some connections I see the notions of agency and place. And second, I will share how I am applying it to the notion of resource conflict using the empirical material from my PhD.