Åsa Össbo

I work as a researcher at Várdduo. As a historian, I work in various research projects with a focus on energy production and conflicts around land use in Sámi areas. During the year 2025, I have worked in the project Peripheral Visions. When global agendas meet Nordic energy peripheries  exploring how the renewable energy transition is envisioned, implemented and challenged in the northern parts of Sweden and Finland and in Greenland, and is financed by the Swedish Literature Society in Finland. During the years 2025 to 2030, I am part of the research program KOSA - Conflict or cooperation? Learn from the history, tensions and conflicts surrounding land use in Sweden's Arctic region, which is financed by the Riksbanken's Jubileumsfond and is a collaboration between researchers from Luleå Technical University, Ájtte - Swedish Fjäll and Sámi Museum in Jokkmokk, UmU, and Lund University. During the years 2025-2027, I will also work in a project funded by the Swedish Energy Agency, in collaboration with researchers from the Royal Institute of Technology, Chalmers, UmU and Boid, emPOWERING all: Just and Inclusive Energy Transitions which examines human-centered energy transitions, where inclusion and justice are seen as crucial for the successful implementation of energy and climate policy.

In 2014, I earned my doctorate in history with a thesis on Swedish hydropower expansion in the reindeer husbandry area and after that have, among other things, taught Sámi studies for two semesters, worked as a research coordinator at Várdduo for two years, which also included own research time. I then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Várdduo. My research areas deal with Indigenous peoples' contemporary and historical land use, conflicts surrounding and consequences of natural resource extraction and energy transitions in Indigenous peoples' areas and northern sparsely populated communities, as well as Indigenous labor history, especially in the Arctic.