At the meeting, there will be a multidisciplinary group of senior scientists present that have vast experiences on the topic, giving feedback to students on manuscripts. The meeting is organised around three sub – themes
1. Agrarian change. Small holder agriculture and trajectories of agrarian change.
Key words: agricultural modernisation, livelihoods, food security, household strategies, global and regional political economy, farming systems, knowledge, policies, land rights
2. Migration and urban-rural linkages. How does increased mobility, flows of remittances and non-farm incomes affect rural economies?
Key words: gender, youth, labour, societal change, globalisation, technology, entrepreneurship, markets
3. Climate change and resource degradation. Compounding pressure on natural resources and effects of global warming.
Key words: Land use, landscape, climate change adaptation, water, governance, forest, forest uses, carbon management, ecosystem services, animal husbandry, population growth
Short bios of senior scientists
Grace Wong (sub-theme on Agrarian Change)
Grace’s research has largely focused on small holder farmers and forest communities within the interface of development, socio-political processes and environmental change. She has led comparative research projects on institutions, politics and livelihoods of swidden farming systems and the poverty-environment nexus of agrarian reform across Southeast Asia. Currently, Grace is a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre working on ecosystem services and human wellbeing in dynamic social-ecological systems, with a particular interest on power, agency and equity in the distribution of benefits and risks from natural resource use and governance.
Jesper Bjarnesen (sub-theme on Migration)
Jesper Bjarnesen is a cultural anthropologist and senior researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute, specialising in regional migration and mobility in war and peace with a particular empirical focus on Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire. Within this framework, he has studied the dynamics of return; urban integration; youth politics; cross-border combatant recruitment; and diaspora mobilisation. He is an active commentator on the Mediterranean migration crisis and has advocated a more migrant-centred approach to European and global migration policies.
Gert Nyberg (sub-theme on Climate change)
Gert Nyberg is a researcher and research coordinator at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. His main fields of research are Agroforestry and Restoration of Degraded Lands, mainly in Eastern Africa. Gert is a soil scientist and works with the dynamics of carbon, nutrients and water in soil-plant systems in applied agriculture and agroforestry systems. He coordinated the Triple L Research Initiative (Land, Livestock and Livelihood), a multidisciplinary research initiative between several Swedish and Kenyan Universities, International research organisations, Vi Agroforestry and local policy makers and stakeholders. He has practical experience from agroforestry and restoration development work in East Africa and has previously been working with Vi Agroforestry.