Hanna Pettersson

Profile

I am a fourth year PhD researcher and a part of the NERC SPHERES Doctoral Training Partnership.

I am a social scientist by training but have an interdisciplinary research focus, applied within human ecology and human dimensions of biodiversity conservation. I have worked with and researched conservation related topics for the past seven years, ranging from jaguar population monitoring in Costa Rica, rewilding of large mammals in Argentina, the impacts of biodiversity conservation on the Sustainable Development Goals through Cambridge Conservation Initiative and environmental education at Nordens Ark in Sweden.

My current research project is focused on human-carnivore interactions in European landscapes and the social-ecological systems that determine them. I am studying the dynamics between expanding large carnivore populations (mainly wolves), managing authorities and rural communities in northern Spain. The emphasis of the project is to explore pathways to coexistence, the social and ecological factors that enable mutual adaptation and how these can be supported. I draw on perspectives and theories from both natural and social sciences, using mainly qualitative methods to gather and analyse my data.

Research interests

• Human-carnivore conflict and coexistence
• Social-ecological and complex adaptive systems 
• Conservation governance
• Political ecology and social justice approaches to conservation
• Rewilding and landscape restoration

Qualifications

• MSc Biodiversity, Conservation and Management, University of Oxford
• BSc Environmental Science (major in Human Ecology), University of Gothenburg
• BSc Global Studies, University of Gothenburg

Research groups and institutes

• Sustainability Research Institute
• Environment and Development