The Zennström Professorship in Climate Change Leadership is focused around a 10-year series of visiting professorships, and housed at NRHU in Earth Sciences at Uppsala University. It works closely with the Senior Lecturer in Climate Change Leadership, Mikael Karlsson, as well as CEMUS and UUSI, where Climate Change Leadership (CCL) activities in education and research are also explored.

The Climate Change Leadership field is broad and dynamic, responding to the needs of an increasingly complex and globalised world from the point of the individual, and how one might learn to live with uncertain futures, to the global, where structures of justice and equity in politics and economics might need to be reorganised in response to changing climates. Zennström Climate Change Leadership is characterised by a series of visiting professorships co-funded by generous donations from Zennström Philanthropies, founded by Niklas Zennström, Uppsala University alumnus, and his wife Katherine Zennström.

We work with academics and students, publics and civil society, and public and private partners to develop provocative activities that unveil and exemplify equitable transitions to low carbon living. Over the past five years these activities have included supporting student activism and student delegations to international climate change negotiations, calculating ambitious rates of mitigation in regions and municipalities that challenge unsustainable industries and development practises, and questioning the very assumptions underpinning the university, from the carbon footprint of the institution and flying academics to reinvigorating the purpose of the curriculum in times of uncertain futures.

STEFANIA BARCA – ZENNSTRÖM PROFESSOR 2021 – 2022

Stefania Barca, Zennström Professor in Climate Change Leadership, Photo by Mikael Wallerstedt

As of early 2021 we are delighted to welcome Stefania Barca as our fourth Zennström Professor in Climate Change Leadership. Stefania is a scholar in Environmental Humanities, with a strong commitment to environmental and climate justice. During her time in Uppsala she will be building on the legacies left by the previous professors, as well as facilitating new initiatives around the Covid-19, climate and care nexus. In particular Stefania looks forward to actively contributing to the convergence of labour, feminist, youth and climate justice organisations towards a politics of Just Transition. Stefania will begin her time in Uppsala with with a series of events with academics, practitioners and activists, exploring emergent themes stemming from such creative and participatory conversations. Her professorship will culminate in a conference on Just Transition in spring 2022, the first of this kind in Europe. 

Contact: stefania.barca@geo.uu.se


Over the past five years, Zennström Climate Change Leadership has given space to a further three visiting professors, Doreen Stabinsky, Kevin Anderson and Keri Facer, who have respectively brought to Uppsala University questions of climate justice and student participation in international negotiations, equitable mitigation through carbon budgets, and universities and learning in the era of a changing climate. The professors are highly engaged with the public, inviting diverse stakeholders and partners to participate in the exploration of how to respond to climate change. 

KERI FACER – ZENNSTRÖM PROFESSOR 2019–2020

Dr. Keri Facer, Professor of Educational and Social Futures, Photo by Mikael Wallerstedt

Keri Facer is Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the University of Bristol, School of Education. She works on rethinking the relationship between formal educational institutions and wider society and is particularly concerned with the sorts of knowledge that may be needed to address contemporary environmental, economic, social, and technological changes.

Since 2013, Keri has been Leadership Fellow for the RCUK Connected Communities Programme. This research programme is creating new relationships between communities and universities, drawing on arts and humanities perspectives and methods to enable new forms of knowledge production to address urgent contemporary issues.

Keri’s aim is to work across the whole of Uppsala University to explore how universities can build partnerships with local, national, and international communities, how we can develop powerful knowledge, and how we can educate students to enable the massive transitions we need to live well with climate change.

Contact: keri.facer@geo.uu.se

KEVIN ANDERSON – ZENNSTRÖM PROFESSOR 2016–2018

Dr. Kevin Anderson, Professor of Energy and Climate Change

Kevin Anderson is one of the leading climate scientists in the U.K. He is Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester and Deputy Director at the renowned Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.

Kevin is a well-known and established researcher within climate change science who engages frequently with policy-makers, the private sector, civil society as well as the media. He has pioneered research on carbon budgets and pathways to acceptable mitigation levels. His work on the technical, social and economic interactions involved in the transformation of energy systems and the mitigation and adaptation to climate change, addresses questions at the core of this professorship’s theme.

Kevin is a prominent thinker, writer and communicator who built on and expanded the work of the first visiting professor in Climate Change Leadership, Doreen Stabinsky.

Contact: kevin.anderson@ccl.uu.se

DOREEN STABINSKY – ZENNSTRÖM PROFESSOR 2015–2016

Dr. Doreen Stabinsky, Professor of Global Environmental Politics

Doreen Stabinsky is Professor of Global Environmental Politics at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine. Her research, teaching, and writing concern the impacts of climate change, particularly on agriculture and global food security. She also serves as advisor to various governments and international environmental organisations, and has a large international network of collaborators.

Doreen stresses the central role that education must play in addressing the growing challenges of climate change and is known for her ability to strengthen young people’s capacity to contribute to a better world. The fact that the focus of the professorship itself was inspired by, and emerged from a student-led course on Climate Change Leadership at CEMUS, made Doreen a fitting first holder of the Zennström Visiting Professorship.

Contact: doreen.stabinsky@ccl.uu.se