Åsa Gerger Swartling

Åsa Gerger Swartling (PhD) is Senior Research Fellow and Head of Knowledge Management at SEI.

Åsa has broad professional experience combining research, scientific leadership, project and programme management in the sustainable development sphere. Her main areas of interest and experience include participatory research, environmental governance, science-stakeholder collaboration and learning, with focus on climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and natural resource management.

In her role as Head of Knowledge Management, Åsa is responsible for enhancing and supporting SEI’s organizational learning process, including knowledge platform development, content management, as well as implementing supporting processes and activities related to SEI’s monitoring, evaluation and learning efforts. She is a member of the SEI Executive team, the SEI Global Management Committee as well as the SEI Global Research Committee.

Other ongoing work includes a co-leader role of the SEI Initiative on Climate Services and contributing to research projects such as HazardSupport and UNLOCK: Understanding Local Government Action towards Sustainable Consumption. Since 2016 Åsa is a member of WWF Sweden’s Council of Trustees. As from 2017,  she serves on the Board of the Swedish International Centre of Education for Sustainable Development (SWEDESD) at Uppsala University, Sweden.

In previous years, Åsa has served as SEI’s Capacity Development Director (Sept 2016 – Dec 2018) and theme leader of the global SEI research theme Transforming Governance (2010-2015).

She spent over six years as affiliated researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (2008-2014), which included a co-leader role of the Stewardship theme; and of two previous research themes, on Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems; and Knowledge Management, Learning and Social Networks.

Åsa has led SEI’s work on a number of larger projects and programmes such as the Mistra-SWECIA programme on Climate, Impacts and Adaptation (2008-2015) and the European Commission funded projects Urban Lifestyles, Sustainability and Integrated Environmental Assessment (ULYSSES) (1996-1999) and Methods and Tools for Integrated Sustainability Assessment (MATISSE) (2005-2008).

She was contributing author of the Global Environment Outlook 5 report, Working Group 4 (2011-2012); has served on the Advisory Committee of the Brock University Environmental Sustainability Research Unit (ESRC), Ontario, Canada (2011 – 2016) and has acted as SEI representative on the Swedish government-led Programme Council of the Swedish National Forest Programme (2014-2015).

Åsa holds a PhD in Sociology from University of York, UK.