Marie Widengård
About Marie Widengård
Marie Widengård is a researcher in Environmental Social Science, focusing on the politics of nature and resource governance, including land, forests, water, mining, fisheries, and energy. Her work integrates political ecology with critical geography, landscape and border studies, science and technology studies, and posthumanist perspectives. Marie's research projects explore themes such as just transitions, with a focus on biofuels and the forest-based bioeconomy, the intersection of extraction, nature conservation, and Indigenous rights, as well as the rights of nature. Her work is grounded in ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Sweden, as well as in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
Currently, Marie examines Borderline Justice: Between Extraction and Conservation in Cockpit Country, Jamaica, see for example Saving the forest to protect the mine. Together with four colleagues, she is also investigating Rights of Nature, specifically the possibilities and implications of granting legal rights to Lake Vättern in Sweden, see Whose Body of Water? Earlier research projects include Just Biofuels and Forest-based Bioeconomy
Marie has been based at the School of Global Studies since 2009. After defending her PhD thesis, Becoming Biofuels, in 2015, she worked as a lecturer for four years, primarily within the fields of Human Ecology and Global Studies. She also served as the Director of Human Ecology Studies in 2016 and 2017.
Before entering academia, Marie worked in civil society, primarily in southern Africa. She has also worked as a consultant on sustainability certification standards (ISO and RSB) and conducted evaluations and scientific literature reviews.
Education
PhD in Environmental Social Science at the School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University on May 27, 2015 PhD thesis: Becoming biofuels: a messy assembling of resources, sustainability, poverty, land use, and nation-states
MSc in Rural Development Studies Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, on October 31, 2003 MSc in Aquatic and Environmental Engineering Uppsala University on October 22, 2003 Master thesis: Intellectual property rights in common bean breeding - opportunities and constraints for local and participatory breeding in Nicaragua
Law School, 120 points, including Swedish and International Environmental Law Lund/Uppsala University, 1996-2003