Photo of Eva Lövbrand

Eva Lövbrand

Professor

Eva Lövbrand's research is focused on the knowledge politics of the environment. She explores how ideas, knowledge claims and expert practices are enacted, legitimated and used in global environmental politics and governance.

The knowledge politics of the environment

Environmental policy debates are often permeated by claims to knowledge and expertise, perceptions of environmental risk and scientific uncertainty. As a consequence, a growing scholarship has asked questions about how knowledge interacts with power and gains political effect in environmental affairs. My research is informed by such questions.

Throughout my research I have explored how ideas, knowledge claims and expert practices are mobilized, legitimated and enacted in global environmental politics and governance. The knowledge politics of climate change serve as my primary empirical arena. In numerous journal articles and book chapters I examine the systems of thought and every-day knowledge practices that inform how climate change is governed internationally, transnationally and in our every-day lives.

My research is rooted in an interpretative research tradition and located at the interface of political science, environmental studies and science and technology studies. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s nominalist approach to central political concepts such as politics, power and government, I ask questions about ‘the how’ of environmental governance and statehood. How is the environment construed as a domain of government? How is environmental governance accomplished in practical and technical terms? How are agent categories and subjectivities constituted through the practices of environmental governance?

In recent years I have taken a particular interest in the Anthropocene concept and how it is reconfiguring green political thinking and practice. This work has recently resulted in the edited volume Anthropocene Encounters: New Directions in Green Political Thinking (Cambridge University Press, 2019).


Publications

2024

Jens Marquardt, Eva Lövbrand, Frida Buhre (2024) The Politics of Youth Representation at Climate Change Conferences: Who Speaks, Who is Spoken of, and Who Listens? Global Environmental Politics, Vol. 1 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Oscar Widerberg, Karin Bäckstrand, Eva Lövbrand, Jens Marquardt, Naghmeh Nasiritousi (2024) A cautionary tale for polycentric governance: states' roles in orchestrating decarbonization Global Environmental Politics (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Anna Bohman, Clifton Evers, Eva Lövbrand (2024) More than one story: remaking community and place in Sweden's transition to a fossil free society Local Environment: the International Journal of Justice and Sustainability (Article in journal) Continue to DOI

2023

Eva Lövbrand, Veronica Brodén Gyberg (2023) In the Shadow of an Oil Refinery: Narrating Just Transitions in the City of Lysekil The politics and governance of decarbonization: The interplay between state and non-state actors in Sweden (Chapter in book)
Eva Lövbrand, Anna Bohman, Veronica Brodén Gyberg, Clifton Evers (2023) Att leva i omställningens tid: varför klimatpolitik är mer än industripolitik

Research Projects

Norrköping Decision Arena.

Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research, CSPR

CSPR is a platform for knowledge production to trigger and promote societal changes towards safe and just climate futures for all. Our goal is to create knowledge and methodological approaches that can support and advance climate actions.

Stones at the Swedish westcoast.

Just transformation: The places, politics and ethics of fossil free society

In 2017 the Swedish Parliament adopted a new climate policy framework that lays the foundations for an ambitious decarbonization of all sectors in Swedish society. The aim is to turn Sweden into the first fossil-free welfare state by 2045.

Children demonstrating

Growing up in a Warming World

In August 2018, 15-year-old Greta Thunberg initiated a school strike in defiance of an adult world that has failed to take climate change seriously. Since then, Fridays for Future has grown into one of the largest protest movements ever.

-

Governing the bioeconomy transition

This project is hosted by the Swedish Agricultural University and studies the forest politics of the Swedish bioeconomy .

CV

Academic Degrees

2012
Associate Professor (docent) in Water and Environmental Studies, Linköping University

2006
PhD in Environmental Science, Kalmar University (2006). Title: “Greening Earth? Science, Politics and Land Use in the Kyoto Negotiations”. Advisors: Professor Bo Wiman, Department of Biology and Environmental Science, Kalmar University and Dr. Karin Bäckstrand, Department of Political Science, Lund University

1999
MSc in Environmental Science, Lund University Masters Programme in Sustainability Studies (LUMES), Lund University

1998
BSc in Political Science, Lund University 

 


Research networks

  • Co-director, Mistra Geopolitics, an international research programme funded by Mistra and hosted by Stockholm Environment Institute.
  • Coordinator and member of the Earth System Governance Project’s Conceptual Task force on the Anthropocene.

Editorial assignments

  • Member of the editorial boards for the journals Global Environmental Politics
  • Critical Policy Studies and the Anthropocene Review

Research visits abroad

  • Visiting scholar at the School of Political and Social Sciences, University of Melbourne, January 2016.
  • Visiting scholar at the School of Environment, University of Auckland, New Zealand, January-March 2014.
  • Post-doctoral research fellow at the Centre for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado, 2007-2008.
     

Education

Education

PhD supervision

I currently supervise the following PhD students:
Main supervisor for Jiayi Zhou, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and Department of Thematic Studies: Environmental Change, Linköping University
Assistant supervisor for Maria Jernnäs, Department of Thematic Studies: Environmental Change, Linköping University 
Assistant supervisor for Jasmine Livingston, Centre for Climate and Environmental Studies, Lund University 
Assistant supervisor for Mareike Blum, University of Freiburg, Germany

Post-doc supervision

Anna Kaijser, Department of Thematic Studies: Environmental Change, Linköping University (since January 2015).
Magdalena Kuchler, Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research, Linköping University (March 2013-December 2014) 

Teaching

My teaching includes undergraduate and graduate courses at Linköping University. Currently I teach two courses at the Bachelor Programme in Environmental Science (International Environmental Management 7, 5 hp and Multiple Ecologies 7,5 hp), one course at the Masters Programme in Science for Sustainable Development (Climate Science and Policy 15 hp), another course at the Masters Programme International and European Affairs at Linköping University (Contemporary Issues in International Governance 7,5 hp), and one PhD course at the Department of Thematic Studies (Interdisciplinarity: Ontology, Epistemology and Practice 3+2 hp).


News

Organisation