CESSS - Center for Environmental and Sustainability Social Science Research
Environment information
Contact
Environmental and climate problems pose serious challenges to contemporary society. Scientific research and policy institutions, such as the United Nations, have emphasized the need for social change and sustainable transformation. Social science research contributes to this movement with crucial knowledge and expertise necessary for the transformation of society towards a sustainable future.
The Center for Environmental and Sustainability Social Science (CESSS) constitutes a platform that brings together and creates synergies between environmental and sustainability researchers within sociology, psychology, and political science. We also collaborate with adjacent social science disciplines to strengthen social science research about environmental and sustainability issues. CESSS emerges from a long history of initiatives and collaborations within the social sciences at Örebro University which laid a solid foundation for the platform’s multidisciplinary collaboration.
CESSS works to enable a constructive and inclusive research environment that facilitates long-term research collaboration and development across disciplinary boundaries. CESSS is led by Karin Gustafsson (sociology), Erik Hysing (political science), and Maria Ojala (psychology).
The research at CESSS is divided into three interrelated themes.
- Theme 1: Public engagement concerning environmental and sustainability issues
- Theme 2: Environmental governance and the state
- Theme 3: Knowledge production, environmental expertise, and learning
CESSS’s work includes:
- Supporting the development of multi-disciplinary research projects and high-quality programs.
- Facilitating research collaborations in the field of environmental and sustainability studies, among both university researchers and external actors.
- Arranging internal CESSS conferences and international research workshops.
- Organizing a multi-disciplinary seminar series open to researchers from disciplines other than sociology, psychology political science, as well as for practitioners with an interest in environmental and sustainability social science. More information on this will be posted here later.
Researchers
- Malin Anniko
- Monika Berg
- Sofia Bergbom
- Magnus Boström
- Ingemar Elander
- Carina Green
- Karin Gustafsson
- Erik Hysing
- Sammyh Khan
- Rolf Lidskog
- Martin Lind
- Erik Löfmarck
- Joakim Norberg
- Maria Ojala
- Jan Olsson
- Adam Standring
- Ylva Uggla
- James White
- Carolin Zorell
- Alessandra Paiusco, PhD student
- Sebastian Svenberg, PhD student
- Oskar Waara, PhD student
Research teams
Research projects
- A wicked problem occupation: exploring how climate change scientists identify and cope with their professional work
- Conceptual development of environmental sociology
- Does the ecosystem services approach matter? Evaluating its political and practical implications for Swedish biodiversity
- Learning to consume less: Can experiences during the C ovid-19 pandemic trigger lifestyle transformation?
- Preconditions for communication about healthy and sustainable food with youths
- Prefiguring sustainable futures through food activism: How young people deal with border tensions between the sustainable and unsustainable in everyday life
- Reconciling safe and circular material flows - a case study of PFAS in the lifecycle of food packaging
News
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Can we combine a circular economy with a toxic-free environment?
A transition to a circular economy would mean a reduced pressure on the environment as a larger part of extracted resources would be recycled. However, one of the issues that needs to be addressed to secure safe circular material flows, is the presence...
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Planning for the future
Ingemar Elander has published a paper discussing the role of planners and planning researchers in the quest of creating sustainable societies and handling global challenges in terms of climate, migration, pandemics and democracy.
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New project on equality in the implementation of the Green Deal receives funding
How can the Green Deal become reality? That is the question for a new project with the aim of finding ways to implement the Green Deal that is sensitive to gender equality and the inclusion of marginalised groups in society.
