Research Profiles

Maria Tengö appointed special professor at Wageningen University

Maria Tengö is principal researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre and now also special professor at Wageningen University and Research. Collage by Stockholm Resilience Centre.

Maria Tengö is the most recently appointed professor at the Stockholm Resilience Centre

In late 2022, Centre researcher Maria Tengö was appointed guest professor at Wageningen University and Research (WUR). Her new position is as the Nature College Special Chair in Human-Nature Relationships in the Anthropocene, established to address the complex sustainability challenges in the Anthropocene – a human-dominated world.

"This is really an excellent opportunity to delve deeper into the complexities of the Anthropocene and the intertwined connections between humans and nature. I’m also looking forward to strengthening the ongoing collaborations between WUR and the Stockholm Resilience Centre," says Maria Tengö.

Tengö is an internationally acclaimed researcher who has engaged with relationships between people and nature and especially how they relate to knowledge and governance systems – as well as their role in actions and movements towards sustainability. She has published pioneering research on the importance of bridging and weaving together multiple knowledge systems.

Her view on humans and nature as fundamentally intertwined has been a driving force and a foundation for her research on Indigenous and local knowledge and governance systems, sense of place, and stewardship – inspiring entry points for the study, recognition and restoration of reciprocal relationships between people and nature in science, policy and practice.

Tengö’s professorship is a 20% position at Wageningen and started in 2023 for an initial five-year term, during which she will remain as principal researcher at the Centre.

Tengö is one of several centre researchers recently promoted to professors. Earlier in 2022, Erik Andersson, Magnus Nyström and Örjan Bodin were appointed professors. This follows similar appointments of Line Gordon and Beatrice Crona in 2021 and Maja Schlüter in late 2020.

Published: 2023-05-17

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