Carolin Zorell
Title: Senior Lecturer School/office: School of Humanities, Education and Social SciencesEmail: carolin.zorell@oru.se
Phone: +46 19 303000
Room: F2239

About Carolin Zorell
I am a Senior Lecturer at the Political Science department, working in several research projects where I investigate the preconditions and dynamics of political consumerism and, more generally, the transformation of consumption towards environmental sustainability. I focus especially, but not exclusively, on food consumption and sustainability.
In my research, I connect insights from Political Science, Psychology, Sociology and Economics, to gain a better understanding of whether, when and in what ways people act in one way or the other. In particular, I am concerned with the inquiry of how context, self-perceptions and peer-group influences form consumer patterns and thereby enable or hinder the transformation of consumption towards environmental sustainability. For this purpose, I use a combination of different methodological approaches, including quantitative surveys, qualitative interviews, experiments and comparative methods.
Before starting at Örebro University as a Postdoc in 2019, I studied International Business at the University of Applied Sciences Pforzheim and the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago (2006-2010), followed by a Master and Doctorate in Political Science at the University of Mannheim and Essex University (2010-2016). Afterwards, I worked as a researcher in various projects located at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Siegen (2016-2018), as Lecturer in Political Sociology at the University of Mannheim (2018-2019), and as Research Associate at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research.
Research projects
Active projects
- ACCTING: Advancing behavioural change through an inclusive green deal (2021-2025)
- Advancing Strong Sustainability in the Nordic Social Science and Humanities (StrongSSH)
- Political consumerism: Consumer motivation and action with special reference to food consumption and sustainability
- Sustainable Internationalization? A Mini-public on Climate Change Measures in Academia
Completed projects
Publications
Articles in journals
- Görtz, C. , Zorell, C. V. & Fitzgerald, J. (2023). Casting light on citizens’ conceptions of what is ‘political’. Acta Politica, 58 (1), 57-78.
- Zorell, C. (2022). Central Persons in Sustainable (Food) Consumption. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19 (5).
- Zorell, C. & Denk, T. (2021). Political Consumerism and Interpersonal Discussion Patterns. Scandinavian Political Studies, 44 (4), 392-415.
- Schnaudt, C. , van Deth, J. W. , Zorell, C. & Theocharis, Y. (2021). Revisiting norms of citizenship in times of democratic change. Politics.
- Zorell, C. (2020). Nudges, Norms, or Just Contagion? A Theory on Influences on the Practice of (Non-)Sustainable Behavior. Sustainability, 12 (24).
- Zorell, C. (2020). Reconfiguring responsibilities between state and market: how the 'concept of the state' affects political consumerism. Acta Politica, 55 (4), 560-586.
- Zorell, C. & Yang, M. (2019). Real-World Sustainable Citizenship between Political Consumerism and Material Practices. Social Sciences, 8 (11).
Books
- Zorell, C. (2019). Varieties of Political Consumerism: From Boycotting to Buycotting. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Chapters in books
- Zorell, C. (2022). Role of Political Awareness in Complex Societal Matters: The Cases of Health and Climate Change. In: Niels Nørgaard Kristensen; Thomas Denk; Maria Olson; Trond Solhaug, Perspectives on Political Awareness: Conceptual, Theoretical and Methodological Issues (pp. 79-96). Cham: Springer.
- van Deth, J. W. & Zorell, C. (2019). Politischer Protest und Konsum. In: Thorsten Faas, Oscar W. Gabriel, and Jürgen Maier, Politikwissenschaftliche Einstellungs- und Verhaltensforschung: Handbuch für Wissenschaft und Studium. Baden-Baden, Germany: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft.
Conference papers
- Zorell, C. (2020). Myths on Political Consumerism and the 'Real-World' - Shape of Sustainable Consumption. Paper presented at ECPR General Conference (Online, Virtual Event), August 24-28, 2020.
- Zorell, C. (2020). Nudging or contagion? Theorizing on empirical observations regarding the pathways to (non‐)sustainable behaviour. Paper presented at SWEPSA Annual Conference (SWEPSA 2020), (Digital Conference), Sundsvall, Sweden, September 30 - October 2, 2020.
Manuscripts
- Zorell, C. V. & van Deth, J. W. Understandings of Democracy : New Norms and Participation in Changing Democracies.