Gustav Cederlöf
Universitetslektor, biträdande
School of GlobalAbout Gustav Cederlöf
Associate Senior Lecturer in Human Ecology
I am an environmental geographer specialising in the politics and cultural dimensions of environmental change. My research focuses on the relationship between energy systems and social life and, especially, the political economy of energy transitions. I have carried out fieldwork in Cuba over long periods and am interested in lived experiences of radical socio-environmental change.
I joined the School of Global Studies in 2021 following eight years at King’s College London. I received a PhD in Geography from King’s and was later a Teaching Fellow in the university’s Department of International Development. In 2018–19 I held an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship in a collaboration between King’s College London, Imperial College London and Queen Mary University of London, after which I took up a lectureship in Liberal Arts & Geography at King’s. I previously also taught in the Department of Geography & Environment at the London School of Economics.
Qualifications
- 2010 BA in Development Studies, Uppsala University
- 2013 MSc in Human Ecology, Lund University
- 2017 PhD in Geography, King’s College London
Research themes
My research examines interdisciplinary questions around energy use as a physical, political, and cultural phenomenon. This relates to a broader interest in how environmental changes interact with different forms of social power and inequality, for example in the context of an energy and climate transition. A geographer by training, I focus on how the uses of different energy sources enable social and economic activities within certain spatial patterns, and how energy transitions subsequently reconfigure these patterns with uneven political, economic, and social outcomes. I am particularly interested in the links between energy production and land use; infrastructure and state formation; and energy use and urban form. Next to the focus on the environment, I have expertise in Cuban and socialist history. I am the author of two books, The Low-Carbon Contradiction: Energy Transition, Geopolitics, and the Infrastructural State in Cuba (University of California Press, 2023) and Discovering Political Ecology (with A. Loftus, Routledge, 2023).
Public engagement
- “Is Cuba the world’s most sustainable country?” (UC Press Blog)
- “Critical Infrastructure / Realities Left Vacant” (Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, n.b.k.)
- “Energy Revolution in Cuba” (Geography Directions, Royal Geographical Society with IBG)
Teaching
I teach and supervise across the School’s offering in human ecology and global studies. I currently convene the following courses:
Undergraduate
- GS1422 Project Management and Evaluation
- HU1221 Sustainable Cities
- HU1232 The History of Sustainable Development
Postgraduate
- ESD400 Economy, Global Inequality and Pathways to Sustainability
- SFGS343 Political Ecology: Conflict, Power and Sustainability
-
Discovering Political
Ecology
Gustav Cederlöf, Alex Loftus
2023 -
The Low-Carbon Contradiction: Energy Transition, Geopolitics, and the Infrastructual State in
Cuba
Gustav Cederlöf
2023 -
Louis A. Pérez Jr., Rice in the Time of Sugar: The Political Economy of Food in Cuba (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), pp. xiv + 249, $29.95
pb.
Gustav Cederlöf
Journal of Latin American Studies - 2021 -
Out of steam: Energy, materiality, and political
ecology
Gustav Cederlöf
Progress in Human Geography - 2021 -
System boundaries as epistemological and ethnographic problems: assessing energy technology and socio-environmental
impact
Gustav Cederlöf, Alf Hornborg
Journal of Political Ecology - 2021 -
Maintaining power: Decarbonisation and recentralisation in Cuba’s Energy
Revolution
Gustav Cederlöf
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers - 2020 -
The revolutionary city: Socialist urbanisation and nuclear modernity in Cienfuegos,
Cuba
Gustav Cederlöf
Journal of Latin American Studies - 2020 -
Review of Daggett, Cara New. 2019. The Birth Of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of
Work
Gustav Cederlöf
Journal of Political Ecology - 2020 -
Has Cuba exposed the myth of “free” solar power? Energy, space, and
justice
Alf Hornborg, Gustav Cederlöf, Andreas Roos
Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space - 2019 -
On PetroCaribe: Petropolitics, energopower, and post-neoliberal development in the Caribbean energy
region
Gustav Cederlöf, Donald V. Kingsbury
Political Geography - 2019 -
Undergraduate student perceptions of assessment and feedback practice: fostering agency and
dialogue
Robert A. Francis, James D.A. Millington, Gustav Cederlöf
Journal of Geography in Higher Education - 2019 -
Low-carbon food supply: the ecological geography of Cuban urban agriculture and agroecological
theory
Gustav Cederlöf
Agriculture and Human Values - 2016 -
Thermodynamics revisited: The political ecology of energy systems in historical
perspective
Gustav Cederlöf
The International Handbook of Political Ecology - 2015