Karin Bäckstrand

Karin Bäckstrand is a Professor in Environmental Social Science at the Department of Political Science at Stockholm University and a senior researcher at the Institute for Future Studies (IFFS) in Stockholm. She is currently serving as a Visiting Professor at the Grantham Research Institute for Environment and Climate Change at LSE between September 2023 and June 2024. She is also an Associate Senior at the Center for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at Canberra University, Australia, and a member of the National Committee of Global Environmental Change at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Her research focuses on global environmental politics, climate policy and governance, democratic legitimacy in global governance, non-state actors in climate change diplomacy after the Paris Agreement, and the implementation of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2030. She has made significant contributions to understanding how states collaborate with societal actors to achieve decarbonization and how collaborative climate governance can foster cooperation between state and non-state actors.

Her work examines Sweden's progress toward becoming a fossil-free welfare state by 2045, analyzing national strategies and governance modes to overcome carbon lock-ins through institutional, economic, technological and behavioral transformation. Her research shows that Sweden's path to decarbonization resembles more of an incremental transition limited to certain sectors rather than a wholesale transformation.

Professor Bäckstrand previously served as a member of the Swedish Climate Policy Council between 2018 and 2022, Professor in Political Science at Lund University, Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford, and Wallenberg Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT. At IFFS, she serves as principal investigator for the project 'Transformative partnerships for sustainable development' and participates in 'Climate ethics and future generations.'

• Principal Investigator: Transformative partnerships for sustainable development
• Researcher: Climate ethics and future generations
• Former Member: Swedish Climate Policy Council (2018-2022)