Anja Moum Rieser

I am the centre coordinator of the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory (EHL) and a Research Engineer at the Division of History of Science, Technology, and Environment, since May 2021. I coordinate various events, workshops and educational activities at the EHL,  in addition to working with communications.

Projects

Occupy Climate Change! (OCC!)

I work on the project OCC!, now with funding from the KTH Climate Action Centre, focusing on the practices and experiments of grassroots organizations' diverse, dynamic, self-organized responses to loss and damage from climate change. Here I specifically coordinate the Atlas of the Other Worlds,  an open-access living archive that gathers cases of various urban grassroots and municipal initiatives that are tackling climate change. The idea is to show that climate change is not only addressed on a global or individual level but to make visible the collective climate action that is already happening. We are always looking for new entries, so if you are interested to contribute to the Atlas, please contact me.

Within the OCC! project I also coordinate the Occupy Climate Change school, a school for early-career researchers, on climate change and its consequences of loss and damage, focusing on interdisciplinary research and direct action concerning environmental justice, climate justice, environmental history, and storytelling.

Crosscuts

I have been the festival coordinator of EHL’s Crosscuts Environmental Humanities Festival for Film & Text in 2022, a  festival that brings together film, speech, and writing of the environmental humanities to create humanistic conversations on pressing concerns between the worlds of research, art, and activism.  We are currently planning the festival in 2024, get in contact if you want to know more.

Mistra Sport & Outdoors

I am part of the project Mistra Sport & Outdoors, which is a large research and collaboration program aiming to generate knowledge that supports the environmental sustainability of sports and outdoor activities. Together with Sara Borgström (SEED, KTH) I work on a policy study analysing comprehensive and strategic policies at the municipal and regional levels in Stockholm County to better understand how environmental effects of outdoor recreation are handled. This study is part of a joint effort with similar empirical studies executed in mountainous and coastal landscapes of Sweden with colleagues at Mid-Sweden University and Gothenburg University.

Background

I have a broad interdisciplinary background with a focus on sustainable development, with a Master's in Social-Ecological Resilience for Sustainable Development from Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University. Here I wrote my thesis on urban foraging in Stockholm, exploring people’s relationship to gathering common resources, i.e. fungi, wild and planted vegetation, and berries. This thesis is part of the Green Access project,  a larger research project that focuses on understanding people's ability to use and gain access to public green areas. I have also researched people’s relationship to blue commons, i.e fishing in Stockholm, within the Blue Urban Commons project at Uppsala University. My main research interests are urban nature, access to nature, outdoor recreation, environmental justice, climate justice,  human-nature connection, and biocultural diversity.