Mia Ågren

Presentation
In fall 2018 I started as PhD student at the Institution for Urban and Rural Development at SLU Ultuna, in Uppsala, focusing on landscape architecture and planning and its link to structural inequality.
In my PhD project, I focus on the relationship between segregation, housing and green space from critical perspectives on power, race/whiteness and planning. I specifically focus on Uppsala municipality, and the planning practice associated to the densification project Östra Sala Backe.
Background
I hold a bachelor degree in sociology and sustainable development from Uppsala university. My master is from SLU and in environmental communication in which I focused my thesis on "Why the whiteness in outdoor recreation?". I studied how one of Sweden's largest environmental organiation worked with issues of gender and diversity, meanwhile due to for instance whiteness influencing that work, had effects that countered their empancipatory intentions. I build on this previous knowledge as I now study urban planning and specifically green planning, from a critical, discoursive and also ethnographic approach.
Supervision
My supervision team includes: Mattias Qviström, Katarina Salzman, Burcu Yigit Turan and Stephanie Leder.
Selected publications
Yigit-Turan & Ågren (2022). Segregation and landscape injustice in the shadows of white planning and green exceptionalism in Sweden. Urban Matters. https://urbanmattersjournal.com/segregation-and-landscape-injustice-in-the-shadows-of-white-planning-and-green-exceptionalism-in-sweden/
Arora-Jonsson, S., & Ågren, M. (2019). Bringing diversity to nature: Politicizing gender, race and class in environmental organizations? Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2(4), 874–898. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848619866381