Henrik Ernstson pursues an understanding of cities and urban landscapes from a social-ecological perspective. He is interested in developing frameworks that can account both for ecological complexity as well as issues of social equity and power. This is pursued through finding ways to merge sociological theory with landscape ecological theory so as to account for both the generation of urban ecosystem services (clean air, fresh water, recreational space, flood control, and pollination and seed-dispersal processes), as well as their distribution (who gets to enjoy these services over different spatial and temporal scales). In his studies in Stockholm (with focus on the National Urban Park) and Cape Town this has partly been done through striving to merge ecological resilience theory with social network analysis (SNA) and actor-network-theory (ANT). He draws on a wide field of scholars from sociology, social movement research, critical geography, ecology and natural resource management.
Henrik Ernstson defended his PhD thesis In Rhizomia: Actors, Networks and Resilience in Urban Landscapes
(pdf, 2 MB) in September 2008. He has been awarded a two-year postdoctoral research grant from the Swedish Research Council Formas during which he will be based at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town, South Africa (starting in June 2010).
See his seminar on Transformative capacity, ecological resilience and social movements from the Resilience 2008 conference in Stockholm:
Together with colleagues he has also been awarded a research grant within the European call of Urban-NET with researchers in Istanbul and Wageningen, alongside a project on the exploration of the modularity of “social-ecological networks". He is the coordinator of ESCAPE, a research and exchange project between the Dept of Sytems Ecology at Stockholm University and the geography department at University of Cape Town.
Henrik Ernstson have co-developed a row of different undergraduate and PhD courses/workshops and regularly lectures in Social Network Analysis (SNA), Urban Ecology, Collaborative Ecosystem Management (with role plays), and Trade and Globalization (with role plays).
His previous occupations include theatre producer, project manager, and teacher, and he holds a MSc in Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering (1998). He has also been a moderator at various seminars and debates. Please contact him if you have ideas for courses, seminars or similar events.
Henrik is engaged in various research themes at the Stockholm Resilience Centre:
Urban social-ecological systems
Regime shifts, scales and sources of reorganisation in social-ecological systems and
Knowledge management, learning and social networks in social-ecological systems.
Recent publications
Ernstson, H., S. Sörlin, and T. Elmqvist. 2008. Social movements and ecosystem services - the role of social network structure in protecting and managing urban green areas in Stockholm. Ecology and Society 13(2):39. [online]
Ernstson H, Sörlin, S. (2009) Weaving protective stories: Connective practices to articulate holistic values in Stockholm National Urban Park. Environment and Planning A (in press)
Ernstson (2008) In Rhizomia: Actors, Networks and Resilience in Urban Landscapes (pdf, 2 MB) PhD thesis Dept. of Systems Ecology,Stockholms Univ., Stockholm.
Links:
African Centre for Cities at University of Cape Town, South Africa
Blog on social-ecological dynamics
Dept of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University
