Emil Sandström

Emil Sandström is an Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in the Division of Rural Development at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). His work spans resource governance and rural change across the Global North and South, with field sites in Sweden, East Africa, and the Nile Basin. He received the Distinguished Teacher promotion in 2022 and was appointed Primus Inspector by the student union in 2025.

His research centers on resource governance in water, forestry, agriculture, and biodiversity conservation, employing critical institutionalism to analyze how institutions shape natural resource management and rural transformation. A core focus is 'commoning'—viewing commons as dynamic social processes rather than static resources—and examining how governance arrangements evolve through contestation and reinvention amid political and environmental shifts. This work bridges political science, anthropology, agrarian history, and rural sociology to address environmental governance and resource access.

Sandström actively supervises doctoral, master's, and bachelor's theses with students including:

• Nora Wahlström (ongoing, main supervisor): Back-to-the-land migration in Sweden
• Tove Ortman (2023, co-supervisor): Landrace cereal for food production
• Linus Karlsson (2020, co-supervisor): State governance in rural Zambia
• Stefan Granlund (2020, co-supervisor): State cash transfers in South Africa
• Raj Chongtham (2016, co-supervisor): Farm management and climate change

He leads the Formas-funded project 'Gröna vågen vänder åter' on back-to-the-land migration and coordinates a book project on local economy, while serving as SLU coordinator for the VR-funded 'Decolonizing Research Methodologies' initiative.

He collaborates with the 'Landsbygdsutveckling - globala nord' (Rural Development - Global North) research group, which investigates interdisciplinary rural transformations, resource governance, and sustainable development across Northern and Southern contexts through policy analysis and fieldwork.