معرفی
Georgia de Leeuw is a Senior Lecturer and Researcher at Lund University, specializing in political science with a focus on extractive industries, green transitions, and environmental justice. She is a member of the Human Rights Profile area at Lund University and holds an active research position in the Department of Political Science. Her current work focuses on the intersection of sustainability, resource extraction, and social justice in the Nordic context.
Dr. de Leeuw completed her doctoral studies at Lund University's Department of Political Science, where her dissertation examined "the comfort of alignment: Mining, green steel, and killjoy desires in Sweden/Sápmi." Her academic background demonstrates deep engagement with political ecology, indigenous rights, and sustainable development frameworks.
Her research interests center on the political dimensions of the green transition, particularly examining perceived injustices in relation to transport, energy infrastructure, agriculture, wetlands, and uranium mining at the local level. She investigates how extractive industries persist within narratives of sustainability, focusing on what she terms "the comfort of alignment" with extractivism in the Swedish North. Her work critically engages with concepts of Nordic innocence, decolonial perspectives, and just transition frameworks. Through fieldwork in Sápmi (the indigenous Sámi homeland spanning northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula), she examines the tensions between green industrial development and indigenous rights.
Her recent publications reveal a consistent focus on the Swedish green steel transition as a case study for examining broader questions about sustainable development. Her work connects industrial policy with environmental justice concerns, highlighting how "green" transitions can perpetuate extractive logics under new guises. She examines the rhetorical strategies used to align green technology development with existing extractive industries, challenging narratives of Nordic exceptionalism and innocence in resource governance.
Dr. de Leeuw is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the project "A Just Transition to a Sustainable Municipality" (JUSUMU), which focuses on perceived injustices that can arise in the green transition at the local level and how these can be addressed to enable a just transition. She has also contributed to the BECC AG research group project "The world of Pantopia: an exploration of ecologically sound futures."
Her research has gained significant attention, with her work being picked up by 9 news outlets, blogged about once, and shared by 2 X users. Her publications have garnered 37 readers on Mendeley, indicating substantial academic interest in her work on the political dimensions of sustainable transitions.
