With a passion for sustainability and interdisciplinary
Last changed: 03 December 2024
Professor Marie Stenseke is the head of SLU's Interdisciplinary Academy (IDA). She has many years of experience of interdisciplinary research and a strong commitment to facilitating and stimulating interaction between researchers who cross the boundaries between natural and social sciences.
The Interdisciplinary Academy (IDA) at SLU started in November 2022 and has drawn inspiration from, among others, the Pufendorf Institute in Lund and the Futures Lab at SLU. Over an eight-month period, participating SLU researchers gets to set aside 20 per cent of their time to jointly develop their ability to work interdisciplinarily. Participants apply as a group and around a thematic topic related to the green transition.
Marie Stenseke, who leads IDA, emphasises that IDA is strongly based on interaction between participants:
- Participants go on a journey during their eight months in IDA, and my job is to guide them along the way. My hope is that they take away lessons learnt about the process and practical skills in how to work across disciplines. And that they spread it further in new contexts that they end up in, so that they pass on the knowledge. As a researcher, you often start new collaborations, and in that, inter- and cross-disciplinary projects and programmes are becoming more common, and you start interacting with people from other sciences. To get off to the best possible start in each such endeavour, it is a great advantage if you have insights into how you need to work to meet across ‘disciplinary truths’.
- Not everyone needs to work interdisciplinarily, but we need more people who does it, in order to be able to deliver better knowledge and meet the major societal and environmental challenges that we are facing in our time. I am a sustainability researcher at heart, so my motivation comes from the fact that we need to address the complex societal challenges in an interdisciplinary way to achieve a sustainable future.
Contact Marie Stenseke for questions about IDA
Are you thinking about applying to IDA? Marie is happy to help you with your questions and to discuss different ideas. Contact Marie by e-mail to marie.stenseke@slu.se
About Marie Stenseke
Marie is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Gothenburg and Deputy Dean of the School of Business, Economics and Law, and currently also Visiting Professor at SLU. The visiting professorship is funded by SLU Future Food, but is associated with the Department of Urban and Rural Development.
Marie Stenseke received her PhD from Lund University in 1997 with a thesis on the farmer and the landscape. Her research has mainly centred on biodiversity, nature conservation and landscape management from a social science perspective. Her list of achievements is long. For several years she was part of the scientific management of IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services). She is also a member of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency's Scientific Council for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and a member of KSLA.
Marie is currently involved in two ongoing Mistra programmes: Mistra Sport and Outdoors, which aims to create a movement for sustainable sport and outdoor recreation, and Mistra BIOPATH, which aims to integrate biodiversity as a natural part of all decisions in the financial system. At SLU, she has participated in the research programmes HagmarksMistra and Naturvårdskedjan.