Environmental Politics Research Group
EPRG – One of Europe’s leading research groups on environmental politics
On this page, the Environmental Politics Research Group (EPRG) is presented, including the conveners, researchers in the group, publications associated with the group, ongoing projects, doctoral projects, postdoctoral projects, related education within and outside the institution, and upcoming seminars.
About the group
The interactions between humans, nature and the wider environment raise important questions for contemporary political analysis spanning a range of foci, from public policy and governance to the study of democracy, power, interests and norms, and the debate on the Anthropocene.
The Environmental Politics Research Group (EPRG) comprises a wide array of international scholars whose research focuses on key challenges of environmental and sustainability politics from global to local levels.
EPRG members deal with a diverse set of topics including the current democratic decline and related questions of accountability and legitimacy, growing institutional complexity, public policies of biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation and adaptation, the effectiveness of different types of governance arrangements, and futuring practices for transformative change.
With a strong foundation in political science, members of the EPRG are engaged in inter- and trans-disciplinary research initiatives, education and teaching programmes, and outreach activities throughout and beyond Lund University.
If you would like to join the group's mailing list, contact the conveners listed below.
Yi hyun Kang
E-mail: yi_hyun [dot] kang [at] svet [dot] lu [dot] se (yi_hyun[dot]kang[at]svet[dot]lu[dot]se)
Jakob Skovgaard
E-mail: jakob [dot] skovgaard [at] svet [dot] lu [dot] se (jakob[dot]skovgaard[at]svet[dot]lu[dot]se)
- Andreou Brolin, Linn
- Canavan, Jana
- Dinc, Pinar
- Droste, Nils
- Yeqing Duan
- Ekström, Hanna
- Eriksson Lagerqvist, Diana
- Garson, Katja
- Hickmann, Thomas
- Holdo, Markus
- Kang, Yi Hyun
- Knaggård, Åsa
- Manners, Ian
- Mao, Julia Qian
- Nelson, Moira
- Skovgaard, Jakob
- Stissing Jensen, Marie
- Stripple, Johannes
- Sundell, Anna
- van Beek, Lisette
- Zelli, Fariborz
Affiliated members
- Alkan Olsson, Johanna
- Andersson, Rickard
- Bengtsson, Ludwig
- Bergman Rosamond, Annika
- Busch, Henner
- Chertkovskaya, Ekaterina
- de Donà, Matteo
- de Leeuw, Georgia
- Drake, Evan
- Hanson, Helena
- Hasselbalch, Jacob
- Hildingsson, Roger
- Holmberg, Karl
- Islar, Mine
- Khan, Jamil
- Livingston, Jasmine
- Lundmark, Linda
- Magalhães Teixeira, Barbara
- Nicholas, Kimberly
- Nicoson, Christie
- Nikoleris, Alexandra
- Raven, Paul Graham
- Svensson, Jesper
- Thoni, Terese
- Ullström, Sara
See the members' personal pages by clicking on each name under the heading 'Researchers in the group' or visit Department of Political Science - Research output - Lund University
Selected publications
- Bexell, M., Hickmann, T., & Schapper, A. (2023). Strengthening the Sustainable Development Goals through integration with human rights. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, 23(2), 133-139.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-023-09605-x - Biermann, F., Hickmann, T., Kang, Y.H., Sénit, C.-A., & Sun, Y. (Eds.). (2025). Essential Concepts for Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals: An A-Z Guide. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003519560
- Biermann, F., Hickmann, T., Sénit, C. A., Beisheim, M., Bernstein, S., Chasek, P., ... & Wicke, B. (2022). Scientific evidence on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals. Nature Sustainability, 5(9), 795-800.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00909-5 - Drake, E., & Skovgaard, J. (2024). Do political institutions influence the dismantling of fossil fuel subsidies? Lessons from the OECD countries and a comparative analysis of Canadian and German production subsidies. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/13876988.2024.2328605
- Droste, N., Olsson, J.A., Hanson, H., Knaggård, Å., Lima, G., Lundmark, L., Thoni, T. Zelli, F. (2022). A global overview of biodiversity offsetting governance. Journal of Environmental Management, 316, 115231. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.115231
- Ekström, H., Danley, B., Clough, Y., & Droste, N. (2024). Barking up the wrong tree? A guide to forest owner typology methods. Forest Policy and Economics, 163, 103208 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2024.103208
- Fridén, A., D'Amato, D., Ekström, H., Iliev, B., Nebasifu, A., May, W., Thomsen, M., Droste, N. (2024). Mapping two centuries of forest governance in Nordic countries: An open access database. Forest Policy and Economics, 160, 103142 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2023.103142
- Garson, K. (2025). Mapping. In: Ekman, U. & Irrgang, D. (2025) (eds.) Environmental Humanities Glossary. Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen. Available at: https://artsandculturalstudies.ku.dk/research/art-and-earth/environmental-humanities-glossary/mapping/
- Garson, K. (2025). Resurrected analysis: Navigating time between two environmental projects in Finland. Area, p.e12991. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12991
- Hickmann, T., Biermann, F., Sénit, C. A., Sun, Y., Bexell, M., Bolton, M., ... & Weiland, S. (2024). Scoping article: research frontiers on the governance of the Sustainable Development Goals. Global Sustainability, 7, e7.
https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2024.4 - Kang, Y. (2025). 'Promise or Peril: How AI Is Discussed in International Environmental Negotiations', in Philipp Hacker (ed.), Oxford Intersections: AI in Society, Oxford Academic, https://doi.org/10.1093/9780198945215.003.0028
- Orsini, A., & Kang, Y. H. (2025). Greta Thunberg and the transnational youth elite in global climate politics: myth or reality? Environmental Politics, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2025.2587471
- Knaggård, Å., & Hildingsson, R. (2023). Multilevel influence and interaction in the Multiple Streams Framework: A conceptual map. In A Modern Guide to the Multiple Streams Framework (pp. 62-81). Edward Elgar Publishing.
https://doi.org/10.4337/9781802209822.00012 - Orsini, A., & Kang, Y. H. (2025). Greta Thunberg and the transnational youth elite in global climate politics: myth or reality? Environmental Politics, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2025.2587471
- Park, H., & Skovgaard, J. (2025). Whose risk counts? Climate risk frames in global green finance governance complex. Earth System Governance, 26, 100288. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esg.2025.100288
- Skovgaard, J. (2024). Economisation as Boundary Work – Integrating Climate Change into IMF Surveillance. Review of International Studies, (early view), 1-20. https://doi.org/doi:10.1017/S026021052400086X
- Skovgaard, J., van Asselt, H., Beaton, C., Drake, E., Jones, N., McCulloch, N., Steenblik, R., & Wooders, P. (2024). Revitalizing international fossil fuel subsidy phase-out commitments through roadmaps, closing loopholes, and support. npj Climate Action, 3(1), 68. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-024-00149-7
From Global Goals to Public Accountability Ecosystems: A Comparative Study of National Parliaments
EPRG researchers: Thomas Hickmann
Funder: Riksbankens Jubileumsfond
Period: 2026-2028
Power and Polarisation in Swedish Forestry: From Lock-ins to Sustainable Transition
EPRG researchers: Fariborz Zelli, Thomas Hickmann, Jakob Skovgaard
Funder: Formas
Period: 2025-2029
From Global Goals to Public Accountability Ecosystems: Strengthening the Post-2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
EPRG researchers: Thomas Hickmann, Yi hyun Kang
Funder: Formas
Period: 2025-2029
Exploring institutional complexity in global biodiversity and climate governance
EPRG Researchers: Thomas Hickmann, Yi hyun Kang
Funder: BECC Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate
Period: 2024-2025
Social networks of private forest owners and the implementation of alternative forest management methods (MultiForSe)
Participating EPRG Researchers: Nils Droste
Funder: Formas
Period: 2023-2026
De-Polarizing Land-Use Conflicts
EPRG Researchers: Nils Droste, Thomas Hickmann, Jakob Skovgaard, Fariborz Zelli
Funder: BECC Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate
Period: 2023-2024
Mistra Biopath
EPRG Researchers: Nils Droste, Jesper Svensson, Julia Qian Mao
Funder: Mistra - Swedish foundation for strategic environmental research
Period: 2022-2026
Transformative Partnerships 2030
EPRG Researchers: Matteo De Donà, Marie Stissing Jensen
Funder: Formas
Period: 2021-2025
Green forests policies: a comparative assessment of outcomes and trade-offs across Fenno-Scandinavia (GreenPole)
EPRG Researchers: Nils Droste, Hanna Ekström
Funder: NordForsk
Period: 2021-2025
STEPS - Sustainable Plastics and Transition Pathways
EPRG Researchers: Karl Holmberg, Johannes Stripple
Funder: Mistra - Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research and external funders
Period: 2016-2024
Working title: Capital-labour relations and the dialectics of nature in a changing climate
Linn’s project examines capital circulation and the organisation of labour in a changing climate. With an empirical focus on Swedish commercial ports, I explore how business actors and trade unions confront and respond to climate-related risks and uncertainties. By highlighting various lines of conflict and power reconfigurations, I intend to develop an understanding of how the effects of climate change reshape the relationship between capital and labour and what it implies for the Swedish labour market model.
Working title: Diverse humans, diverse forests? Policies, actors, and land use change
Hanna’s research interests lie in governance of, relations to, and conflicts around land use and resources. In her PhD project she applies a social-ecological framework to explore private forest owners’ relations to their forests and to understand the implications from different human-forest relations for policy implementation. In her research, Hanna combines go-along interviews, agent-based social simulation, surveys, and geographic information. She is passionate about bringing together approaches from social and natural sciences, and critically analyze how methods influence science and policy.
Working title: Navigating utopian imaginaries in ecovillages: the politics of environmental subjectivity and desire
Diana’s project explores how utopian practices and environmental subjectivity takes shape in eco villages and communities-led initiatives. This project will explore how eco villages and communities represents a utopian ‘not-yet’, and how such utopianism plays out at the level of subjectivity. Thus, this project attends what it means for subjects to ‘care for the environment’, the becoming of an environmental subject, and how such processes are shaped by living, staying, or visiting and eco community.
Thus, this project approaches eco communities as utopian ‘sites’ of environmental subjectivity, in which present and futures eco-utopias can be navigated, and environmental desire be explored. What kind of care relations of the self, the community, and (non-human) others are shaped? What utopian regimes of practices shape such process of becoming environmental subject?
This project will carry out ethnographic fieldwork with interviews and participatory observations in in ecovillages.
Working title: Political Economy of Biodiversity Financing
Julia’s project investigates how biodiversity finance is governed and what factors influence decision-making in biodiversity financing. Employing a mixed-method, abductive and iterative research design, the project consists of comparative studies on global biodiversity finance, case studies at country level. It aims to develop and test a theoretical framework elucidating the factors influencing decision-making in biodiversity financing.
Title: Social networks of private forest owners and the implementation of alternative forest management methods (MultiForSe)
In the MultiForSe project, Yeqing investigates the emergence and diffusion of innovative multi-use forestry practices among family forest owners in Sweden. She is developing an agent-based model informed by qualitative survey data to simulate the social dynamics underlying forestry transitions. Her research aims to advance understanding of: (1) the conditions under which localized changes in forest management practices can scale up to broader social processes, potentially leading to the establishment of new practice regimes; and (2) how targeted policy interventions can shape and facilitate these transformative dynamics.
Title: Exploring institutional complexity in global biodiversity and climate governance
Yi hyun’s research explores the governance, network and discursive aspects of climate, biodiversity and sustainable development politics at the global level. Regarding governance, her research looks into the role of civil society, particularly youth, within the complex landscape of global environmental politics. Regarding networks, she investigates the social networks of (non-state) actors involved in climate change and biodiversity institutions. Regarding discourse, she analyzes discourse networks of youth as well as the discursive linkages between technology and environmental policies. Through the three lenses, this project aims address the wide array and diversity of actors and institutions operating in global environmental politics.
Title: Making sense of state climate (in)action - An existentialist study of how states imagine global climate change
In this 3-year individual project funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), Nina investigates potential psycho-philosophical obstacles to effective climate action. Starting from the assumption that an unprecedented challenge like that posed by global climate change first needs to arise in the imagination, she is interested in how state actors conceptualise climate change and their role in it. Taking inspiration from philosophical and psychological existentialism for her theoretical framework, Nina asks: How does awareness of climate change affect states’ experience of time? How do they imagine the past, present, and future? How do state actors construct meaning in times of perpetual crises and how do they envision their responsibilities with regard to the future? Most importantly, how do states make sense of the notion of an ‘existential’ threat and mitigate anxieties related to the possibility of human extinction?
Title: Biodiversity and cooperative institutions in Sweden
In Mistra BIOPATH, Jesper is exploring the relationship between market integration and collective action in forests in Sweden. Specifically, he is compiling a systematic literature review on the status and trends of governance of biodiversity finance (e.g., the role of secure property rights for nature conservation). In addition, he is conducting a discrete choice with Swedish forest owners to understand acceptance of policy options for forest conservation. He is doing this in collaboration with the Swedish Forest Agency and with different forest associations. His research will provide evidence-based decision support for policy makers regarding:
- Who should pay for biodiversity levels in Swedish forests?
- Paying for what? How long? How much?
Title: Imaginaries of sustainable futures
Lisette’s research is on imaginaries of sustainable futures. Her postdoctoral research is part of the NATURESCAPES project, a EU Horizon project that aims at better understanding the transformative potential of nature-based solutions in 12 case study areas across Europe, the US and Latin America. In this project, Lisette studies imaginaries of urban nature and ‘techniques of futuring’. She also coordinates the development of artistic interventions to rethink dominant understandings of nature.
Courses or programmes at the department related to the group’s research
- Environmental and Planetary Politics STVN25 (15 credits, MA level)
- Environmental Governance STVC55/STVK02 (7.5 credits, BA level)
- Global Environmental Governance (3 credit PhD Course ClimBEco Graduate School)
- Policyprocesser - aktörer, drivkrafter och konsekvenser STVN10 (7.5 credits, MA level)
- Power, Politics, and the Environment STVN17 (15 credicts, MA level)
- Säkerhet, miljö och konflikt FKVA22 (7.5 credits, BA level)
- The Politics of Climate Change STVC72 (7.5 credits, BA level)
Miljö, politik och förvaltning MVEB15 (15 credits, BA level at Centre for Environmental and Climate Research)
Miljövetenskap: Klimatpolitik, samhällsstyrning och kommunikation MVEN16 (15 hp, MA level at Centre for Environmental and Climate Research)
| Date | Room | Activity |
Friday, 30 January 2026 12:00 – 14:00 | Eden 367 | Jonas Kreutzer (Lund University) 50 Years of Innovation Towards a Swedish Forest-Based Bioeconomy Yinuo Zhou (Eindhoven University of Technology) Modelling nature land dynamics in metropolitan areas through integrating stakeholder interactions into multi-type land-use competition: The case of the Randstad, Netherlands |
Friday, 27 February 2026 12:00 – 14:00 | Eden 367 | Presentations by Gina Song Lopez and Linn Brolin |
Friday, 27 March 12:00 – 14:00 | Eden 367 | Internal seminar
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Research group seminars
In the shared calendar on our English internal website, you can see all the internal seminars of the research groups.