The Political Ecology Research Theme, KTH SEED
The Political Ecology Research Theme at KTH foregrounds how landscapes, infrastructure, and ecosystems are shaped by uneven relations of power in urban and rural settings. Hosted at a technical university, the theme develops interdisciplinary and cross-school projects to analyse how profound technological change in the realms of energy, housing, logistics, and information-processing in the 21st century impacts and is shaped by deep socioenvironmental inequalities in access to power, knowledge, and capital. It assists society, public debate, and policy-making with critical analysis that can make visible how the costs and benefits of social and technological change is distributed and whose voice and knowledge is listened to when decisions and debates about our common future are taken. Based at the KTH Environmental Science Department (SEED) and its Division of Strategic Sustainability Studies, the theme develops interdisciplinary research on urban and environmental issues and draws on critical geography and critical social theory alongside historical, geographical, participatory, and film-based approaches, as well as natural and engineering sciences.
Political ecology is the study of the dialectical relationships between political, economic, social, and environmental factors, emphasizing how environmental change is inseparable from broader structures of classed, gendered, and racialized forms of social power and inequalities. Through field-based, archival, and survey-methods, our researchers and students want to be in-the-thick-of-things to participate, interview, observe, film, and photograph and to arrange stakeholder workshops to tease out key dynamic relations that shape socioenvironmental and technological change. These approaches develop knowledge on how social structures of race, gender, and class create barriers to infrastructure, shape knowledge production, and how political claims and social movements can emerge to contest and open pathways toward more just and sustainable ways of living.
The research theme advances Political Ecology by gathering and synthesising findings from ongoing research of activities on land, in the bedrock, along coasts, and in the seas, including the politics of: urban green space, biodiversity, and so-called nature-based infrastructure (EU, USA, Asia, Africa); heterogeneous infrastructure in Southern cities (Kampala, Nairobi, Mumbai); urban transport and mobility justice (Sweden); how extractive infrastructures for oil, gas, minerals, and "green" energy are embedded within institutional mechanisms for managing, mediating, delivering, and producing "nature as value" (Angola, Chile, Namibia, Sweden; and Venezuela); and how dredging and port expansion as infrastructure work facilitate (green re-)industrialization while impacting marine ecologies and geomorphologies (Luleå, Hamburg, New Orleans, Savannah, and Singapore).
The research theme offers students at KTH and other universities, alongside professionals and the general public, opportunities to develop their skills and critical thinking about 21st century challenges. We organise open seminars, convene KTH’s foundational Political Ecology course every fall ( AL2121 Global Development and Political Ecology ), and an inclusive reading group focusing on foundational and contemporary principles, texts and films ( Political Ecology Reading Group at KTH ). We offer supervision for Master and Bachelor students and during semesters we try to have regular office hours for our KTH students posted on our office doors and personal staff pages.
The Political Ecology Research Theme at KTH was founded and is directed by Professor Henrik Ernstson and co-directed by Gianfranco Selgas. It gathers scholars at KTH with collaborators across institutions in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe.
Group leader
Group members
Upcoming events
News and upcoming events, go here.
Project websites (selection)
Terra Potentia: The World-making Force of Dredging (2024-2027)
Art of the Dredge: Video-based Research into the Invisible (2025-2026)
Sediments, Dredging, and Land-making Labour in Singapore (2026-2030)
Archives of the Planetary Mine: Special Issue (2024-2026)
Energized Authoritarianism (2026-2030) (link to be added)
BatteryFutures (link to be added)
National and international networks
The Situated Ecologies Platform
Situated Urban Political Ecology (SUPE) Collective
Politics of the Low-emission Energy Transition-Addition (POLTRANSa)
KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory
POLLEN — Political Ecology Network
Visiting Address:
Political Ecology at KTH Research Theme
Teknikringen 10B
Division of Strategic Sustainability Studies
Department of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engineering (SEED)
KTH