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
- 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
News
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How might a globalized environmental sociology look like?
Rolf Lidskog, member of CESSS, has together with Stewart Lockie, Director of The Cairns Institute, James Coock University, Australia, published a chapter in The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology. The chapter discusses what a more thoroughly...
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Expert organizations’ responsibility to support the next generation of sustainability experts
An article about expert organizations’ institutional understanding of expertise and responsibility for the creation of the next generation of experts by Karin Gustafsson has been published recently. In the article the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate...
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How do teachers deal with emotions in climate change education? Ny sida
Are emotions, such as worry about climate change, something irrational that should be avoided in climate change education, or are emotional reactions something positive for learning? Maria Ojala has published an article about senior high-school teachers’...
