Karin Bäckstrand

After two years postdoctoral work as a Wallenberg Fellow for Environment and Sustainability at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2002 – 2004), Karin Bäckstrand has returned to the Department of Political Science, where she also teaches environmental politics and international relations.

Karin’s research interests revolve around global environmental politics and the role of scientific expertise in environmental negotiations. Her dissertation explored the role of scientific advisory in and dominant framings of risk and scientific uncertainty in transboundary air pollution diplomacy. Her postdoctoral work examined the normative dimension of scientific expertise, encapsulated in calls for public participation in scientific decisionmaking.

In a new cross-faculty research project that Karin coordinates, GreenGovern (financed by Formas) the democratic legitimacy of environmental governance is examined. The focus is on the “new” governance modes for sustainable development, which rely on voluntary, deliberative and soft forms of steering. The shift to deliberative modes of decision making are examined in the domains of climate change, forestry and biotechnology.

Karin’s research has been published in Environmental Politics and Global Environmental Politics as well as chapters in international book volumes. Karin also teaches at the Department of Political Science as well as in LUMES program (the Lund University International Master’s Program in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science) at the Lund University Center for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS) where she has developed and taught a range of courses in environmental politics since 1997.