My research focuses on the implementation of political goals, natural resource governance and management and environmental politics and policy.
I am mainly interested in governance and public administration issues, the implementation of political goals, and natural resource governance and management from a political science perspective. I am currently working in the Swedish Research Council-financed postdoctoral project "Collaborative Water Governance in the European Union: A Comparison between Two Member States". In it I study the implemetation of EU water-related policy through an interdisciplinary research approach that combines my political science background with engineering and natural resources management expertise. The research has three research objectives: 1) discover how EU water-related policies encourage cross-sectoral collaborative governance and what institutional approaches Finland and Sweden have in their implementation; 2) examine the forms of knowledge Finland and Sweden use in cross-sectoral collaborative processes aiming to reach EU policy goals; and 3) from a comparative perspective, bring understanding on how collaboration and use of knowledge can be designed to help attain EU water policy goals and to promote sustainable use of natural resources.
I am interested in analysing the connections and dynamics between stakeholders at various levels of governance. My previous research from my doctoral thesis focused on the cross-sectoral governance of forest water within a multilevel institutional system. My PhD was part of the interdisciplinary project Healthy Waters: The Role of Collaborative Governance to Minimize Negative Forestry Impact on Water Quality. The project was a collaboration between the Department of Political Science at Umeå University and the Department of Forest Ecology and Management at the Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences (SLU). The overall aim of the research project is to analyse how successful collaborative efforts are in curbing the negative impacts of the forestry sector on forest waters.
In addition to the above-mentioned issues, I am interested in international relations; the European Union; and the local, as well as the global environmental movement.
I have in the past been course-responsible for courses mainly focusing on Public Administration, Politics and Society and Environmental Governance. I have taught a number of courses at the Department of Ecology and Environmental Science (EMG), Umeå University, related to natural resource governance and public administration. I also supervise and examine bachelor theses.