Henrik Ernstson

Henrik Ernstson is a human geographer and political ecologist with a background in systems ecology and applied physics. He explores the confluence of urban and environmental issues, focusing on how societal structures—shaped by race, gender, and class—create barriers to infrastructure access and validate knowledge and political claims. Ernstson employs historical, geographical, and participatory approaches in his studies, which have spanned the politics of biodiversity in Cape Town, informal infrastructure in Kampala, the impacts of oil extraction in Luanda, and infrastructural and ecological shifts in New Orleans. At KTH, he and his students integrate postcolonial, decolonial, feminist, and Marxist theories with case studies to examine industrial capital's effects on environments and societies, highlighting resistance and pathways to equitable, sustainable living. His recent work delves into the politics of low-emission energy transitions, focusing on electric car production's mining impacts in Chile, Venezuela, and Sweden, and a study on the political ecology of dredging across port cities in Europe, the USA, and Singapore, considering sediment movement as a capitalist force in urbanization. Ernstson's contribution to political ecology includes two edited volumes and innovative collaborative film-making, with ethnographic films produced in Cape Town and eThekwini-Durban.