Christian Pilegaard Hansen

Christian Pilegaard Hansen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Food and Resource Economics at the University of Copenhagen, specializing in the political ecology and political economy of natural resources in developing countries. His work primarily focuses on forests and forestry, with particular emphasis on timber and charcoal commodity chains.

Hansen's research centers on the relationship between economic and political processes and natural resources, with extensive fieldwork in Ghana. He leads two major research programs: Access and Exclusion along the charcoal commodity chain in Ghana (AX) and Access-Authority Nexus in Farmer-Herder Conflicts in Ghana (AAN). His work examines benefit sharing, illegal logging, and the implications of the FLEGT (Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade) and VPAs (Voluntary Partnership Agreements).

Hansen's recent publications reveal a strong focus on Ghanaian resource governance, with particular attention to farmer-herder conflicts, charcoal production systems, and forest conservation history. His work spans multiple disciplines including political ecology, environmental history, and natural resource economics, with field research extending across multiple African countries and Southeast Asia.

• Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University Award for excellent MSc degree (1992)
• Chairman of the Danish Steering Committee of the Growth & Employment Platform under the Building Stronger Universities in Developing Countries initiative (2011-2013)
• Danish Representative in European Tropical Forestry Research Network (ETFRN)

Hansen supervises four PhD students (Numan Amanzi, Srijana Baral, Lawrence Brobbey, and Frank Agyei) and numerous MSc and BSc students. He serves as course responsible for the MSc course Interdisciplinary Land Use and Natural Resource Management and teaches in the MSc course Political Ecology. His external funding includes significant projects from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Danida), totaling over 70 million DKK across multiple research initiatives.