Annette Löf

Annette Löf is a Senior Research Fellow at SEI Headquarters – Rights and Equity, Resources, Rights and Development Division.

Her research focuses broadly on environmental and land use governance, collaboration and conflicts, typically in a Northern and/or indigenous context. Her work is characterized by a critical, engaged and change-oriented scholarship. She has 15 years of experience in the field of Sami research, where she works with issues concerning reindeer herding, indigenous rights, governance, land use and climate change.

Her ongoing research projects concern the impacts of forest fires on Indigenous lands (Read-Fire), critically assessing dialogue-based tools for land use planning and governance in Sápmi (Mistra-EC, Sápmi), unpacking the meaning of climate adaptation in a Swedish context (Making sense of Adaptation) and mapping and understanding environmental change in Svalbard (Svalur).

Annette frequently engages as advisor and expert to various actors and processes, including Sami reindeer herding communities, public authorities and organizations. She is currently on the expert advisory board to Charter Arctic, an EU Horizon 2020 project and is appointed expert in the Swedish parliamentary committee tasked with proposing a new reindeer herding legislation (Renmarkskommittén N 2021:02).

Prior to joining SEI, Annette worked as researcher in Environmental Communication at the Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences (SLU), where she has led and participated in research projects and programs on Reindeer husbandry and Global Environmental Change (ReiGN), and collaborative initiatives in Swedish green sector. Prior to her years at SLU, she has worked as senior lecturer in Environmental Studies at Södertörn Högskola and Chief Research Assistant at Várdduo, the Centre for Sami Research at Umeå University. For the past 20 years she has also taught, developed programs and courses, and supervised students from basic to PhD-level on topics relating to Sustainable development, Environmental governance, Natural resource management, Research Ethics and Environmental Policy.

Annette holds a PhD in Political Science from Umeå University and a MSc in Natural Resource Management and Globalization from Stockholm University.