Seema Arora-Jonsson
Presentation
I work with sustainability and justice in environmental governance, climate transitions and rural development across the global North and South.
I lead the research group, Rural Developent in the Global North and we work on questions of rural transformation and environmental politics in Sweden and Europe. We bring a critical perspective to development and environmental governance/politics in the global North, whose own development has been often taken as the unproblematic template for the rest of the world. We engage with local rural and indigenous groups such as Sami communities in Sweden to emphasize the importance and contribution of rural and indigenous lives in confronting global challenges of sustainability and climate change.
To this end, our group includes a vital outreach subgroup. We are responsible for a governmental mission, Uppdrag Landsbygd, tasked with strengthening research on rural areas and providing policy relevant knowledge for decision-makers in Sweden.
I collaborate with international agencies such as Oxfam, UN Women, UNDP and FAO and have been part of the International Panel for Climate Change Report for 2022.
I am a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry where I am part of the academy's research committee. I am an office holder in IUFRO, the International Union of Forest Research Organizations and on the boards of sustainability initiatives/institutes in the UK and Finland. My administrative work at the university includes membership of the Professors Appointment Board at the Faculty of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences.
Research
I work with questions of sustainability and justice in relation to environmental governance, climate transitions and rural development across the global North and South. My research is shaped by the need to decolonize development and environmental governance in particular contexts but within wider transnational currents and relations. Feminist thinking and questions of gender, race, ethnicity (indigeneity), class, geography are central to all my work.
I work across the diverse contexts with a committment to inclusive, reflexive, and socially just knowledge production and action. I am the Principal Investigator of two ongoing resesarch projects, Climate transitions in Contested Forests and Migrant Relations and Rural Environments: A neglected dimensions of sustainable development. I work on the contested politics of forest governance (see my book Gender, Development and Environmental Governance), climate transitions (Just Transitions), resource extraction, the work of natural resource bureaucracies, citizenship implications of the geopolitics of climate programs, rural governance and the politics of migration and sustainability in Sweden.
A critical subjectivity regarding my own place in the research and questions of research approach are crucial for me. I work with participatory and ethical approaches where along with scientific inquiry, different ways of knowing are acknowledged as important in creating knowledge and a space for change. For example in collaborative inquiries with women in villages, the participants themselves shaped the inquiry and the research became a site of emancipatory politics through collective work and organising (see discussions in the book Doing Science Together).
A translocal approach is vital to my work. I analyze rural, environmental, and climate questions through a North–South perspective, using “North–South” not only geographically but analytically. By relating, connecting and comparing places explore how global discourses are articulated in different places and how uneven relations of power, development, and environmental knowledges provide the space or set the limits for transitioning with justice.
While my research is critical of existing structures of development, climate, and sustainability, I do not simply reject them. Instead, I seek to engage with these systems, using their contradictions to conceptualize and act for meaningful change.
Teaching
I teach and supervise students at the undergraduate, master and PhD level.
PhD courses:
Gender Development and Environmental Governance (8.5 ects)
Methods of Inquiry: Narratives and Discourses (5 ECTs)
Debating (Rural) Development and Environment across the Global North and South (7,5)
Rural environments in transition: Development and governance in the global North (7,5)
Publications
1. Contributing author, Working Group II contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Cross-Chapter Box GENDER: Gender, Climate Justice and Transformative Pathways. https://www.ipcc.ch
Publications in international peer-reviewed scientific journals
2. Arora-Jonsson S (2023) The sustainable development goals: A universalist promise for the future. Futures 146(103087).
3. Arora-Jonsson S and Wahlström N (2023) Unraveling the production of ignorance in climate policymaking: The imperative of a decolonial feminist intervention for transformation. Environmental Science and Policy 149.
4. Arora-Jonsson S and MacAreavey R (2023) From crisis to sustainability: The politics of knowledge production on rural Europe. Sociologia Ruralis 63(3): 771-792.
5. Arora-Jonsson et al (2023) Multiple dimensions of sustainability: Towards new rural futures in Euope. Sociologia Ruralis 63(3): 377-378.
6. Arora-Jonsson, S and Gurung, J (2023) Changing business as usual in global climate and development action: Making space for social justice in carbon markets, World Development Perspectives, Vol. 29.
7. Morrissey, J, MacGregor, S and Arora-Jonsson, S (2022) Addressing the climate and care crisis, Stanford Social and Innovation Review, DOI: 10.48558/sv59-e431
8. de Lima, P, Leach, B, Radford, D & Arora-Jonsson, S (2022) Editorial: The Well-being of International Migrants in Rural Areas: Bridging the Migration-Development Nexus, Front Sociol. 2022; 7: 870810. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2022.870810.
9. Stiernström A and Arora-Jonsson S (2022) Territorial Narratives: Talking Claims in Open moments Geoforum. 129, 74-84.
10. Arora-Jonsson S, Colfer CP and Gonalez-Hidalgo M (2021) Seeing the Quiet Politics in Unquiet Woods: A different vantage point for a future forest agenda Human Ecology. 49 (3), 297-308.
11. Arora-Jonsson S and Larsson O (2021) Lives in limbo: Migrant integration and rural governance in Sweden. Journal of Rural Studies 82: 19-28.
12. Powell, S and Arora-Jonsson, S (2021) The Conundrums of formal and informal meritocracy: dealing with gender segregation in the academy. Higher Education, 83(969-985).
13. Arora-Jonsson S and Ågren M. (2019) Bringing Diversity to Nature: Politicizing gender, race and class in environmental organizations. Environment and Planning E. Vol. 2 (4).
14. Arora-Jonsson S and Basnett BS. (2018) Disciplining Gender in Environmental Organizations: The Texts and Practices of Gender Mainstreaming. Gender, Work & Organization 25: 309-325.
15. McLeaod E, Arora-Jonsson S, Masudac YJ, et al. (2018) Raising the voices of Pacific Island women to inform climate adaptation policies. Marine Policy 93: 178-185.
16. Westholm L and Arora-Jonsson S. (2018) What room for politics and change in global climate governance? Addressing gender in co-benefits and safeguards. Environmental Politics 27: 917-938.
17. Arora-Jonsson, S. (2017) Integration and Development at a Crossroads: Culture, Race and Ethnicity in Rural Sweden, Environment and Planning A. 49 (7), 1594-1612.
18. Arora-Jonsson, S. (2017), Blind Spots in Environmental Policy-Making: How beliefs about Science and Development may jeopardize environmental solutions. World Development Perspectives, 5, 27-29.
19. Arora-Jonsson, S. (2017), Policy Discourses and Marginal Places: Histories of Environmental Democracy in India and Sweden, Social Sciences, 6 (1) 33.
20. Arora-Jonsson, S. (2017) The realm of freedom in new rural governance: micropolitics of democracy in Sweden, Geoforum, 79 (58-69), 2017. (Also translated into Mandarin)
21. Elias, M and Arora-Jonsson, S. (2017), Negotiating Across Difference: Gendered Exclusions and Cooperation in the Shea Value Chain, Environment and Planning D. Vol. 35(1)
22. Arora-Jonsson, S. (2016), Does Resilience have a culture? Ecocultures and the Politics of Knowledge Production, Ecological Economics, 121 (98-107).
23. Arora-Jonsson, S, Westholm, L, Temu, BT and Pettit, A, (2016), Carbon and Cash in Climate Assemblages: The Making of a New Global Citizenship, Antipode. 48 (1) 74-96.
24. Westholm, L and Arora-Jonsson, S. (2015), Defining solutions, finding problems: deforestation, gender and REDD+ in Burkina Faso, in Conservation and Society, 13 (2).
25. Holmgren, S and Arora-Jonsson, S. (2015), The Forest Kingdom – With What Values for the World? Gender equality and climate change in a new Swedish forest policy context, Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research, 30:3 (235-245).
26. Arora-Jonsson, Seema (2014), Forty years of gender research and environmental policy: where do we stand in Women’s Studies International Forum, 47 (295-308).
27. Arora-Jonsson, Seema Virtue and Vulnerability: Discourses on women, gender and climate change in Global Environmental Change, 21:744-751. 2011. (Translated into French)
28. Vertu et vulnérabilité: Les discours sur les femmes, le genre et le changement climatique” in Anne-Marie Devreux (ed), Les Sciences et le Genre: Déjouer l’androcentrisme. Pgs. 81-95. Presses Universitaires de Rennes.
29. Arora-Jonsson, Seema, Particular and wider interests in natural resource management: Organizing together but separately in Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research, 25 (Suppl. 9): 33-44. 2010.
30. Arora-Jonsson, Seema, Discordant Connections: Discourses on Gender and Grassroots Activism in Forest Communities in India and Sweden in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 35, no. 1. 2009.
Article awarded the Catherine Stimpson prize for outstanding feminist scholarship. Reproduced in C.J.P Colfer, M. Elias, B Basnett & S. Hummel (eds). Classics in Gender and Environment, London, 2017.
31. Translated into Swedish, Arora-Jonsson, S, Disharmoniska förbindelser: Diskurser om genus och gräsrotsaktivism i två skogssamhällen i Indien och Sverige with an introduction by Pär-Anders Svärd, Den könade landsbygdens globala mening. Introduktion till Seema Arora-Jonsson, Tidskrift för Genusvetenskap, 46 (1) 2016.
32. Arora-Jonsson, Seema, Bortom den rätta frågan. Metodologiska innebörder av att forska tillsammans (Beyond the right question: Methodological Implications of doing research together) in Tidskrift för Genusvetenskap (Journal of Gender Research), nr. 2, 2008.
33. Arora-Jonsson, Seema, Relational Dynamics and Strategies: Men and Women in a Forest Community in Sweden, Agriculture and Human Values, Volume 21, Issue 4, 2004.
Peer reviewed Books/ Monographs
34. Arora-Jonsson, Seema, Cecilia Waldenström and Emil Sandström (2024), Hållbarhetens dimensioner, Verbal/Stockholm. Textbook on sustainability in Swedish
35. Arora-Jonsson, Seema, Kavya Michael and Manish Shrivastava (eds)(2023) Just Transitions: Gender and Power in India’s Climate Politics, Routledge, New York/London.
36. Arora-Jonsson, Seema, Gender, Development and Environmental Governance: Theorizing Connections, Routledge, London/New York. 2013. (Single authored)
37. Andrea Cornwall, Katja Jassey, Seema Arora Jonsson and Patta Scott-Villiers (2007), The Beast of Bureaucracy and other tales from Valhalla, Institute of Development Studies, Brighton.
Peer reviewed book chapters
38. Arora-Jonsson, S (2025) Ensuring Justice through good practice: Establishing the context for change across organisational scales in Buckingham, S et al (ed), Feminist Climate Policy in Industrialised States A Gender-Just Climate Emergency Response, Routledge.
39. Arora-Jonsson, S and Stiernström, Arvid (2024) Towards a green transition: A post and decolonial analysis of the green state of Sweden. In: McEachrane, Michael and Louis Faye (eds) Decolonial Sweden. Routledge. London.
40. Arora-Jonsson, S, Eriksson Baaz, M, Helgesson, S, Hornborg, A, Mählck, P, McEachrane, M, Rönnbäck, K, Sebhatu, RW (2025) (De)colonial Sweden in the World: An email conversation. In McEachrane, Michael and Louis Faye (eds) Decolonial Sweden. Routledge. London.
41. Arora-Jonsson S (2024) Identiteter och demokrati i hållbarhetsarbete: berättelser om migration till landsbygden. In: Arora-Jonsson S, Waldenström C and Sandström E (eds) Hållbarhetens Dimensioner. Stockholm: Verbal.
42. Arora-Jonsson S, with, Bannerjee S, et al. (2023) Voices from the field: Working for a just climate in India. In: Arora-Jonsson S, Michael K and Shrivastava MK (eds) Just Transitions: Gender and Power in India’s Climate Politics. London/New York: Routledge.
43. Shrivastava M, Arora-Jonsson S and Michael K (2023) Gender and India's climate policy: Bridging the disconnects. In: Arora-Jonsson S, Michael K and Shrivastava M (eds) Just Transitions: Gender and Power in India’s Climate Politics. London/New York: Routledge.
44. Arora-Jonsson, S (2022) Systemskifte för vem: Landsbygden och den stora galenskapen. In: Altermark N and Dahlstedt M (eds) Bortom Systemskiftet: Mot en ny gemenskap. Stockholm: Verbal, pp.517-538.
45. Arora-Jonsson S and Leder S (2020) Gender Mainstreaming in Agricultural and Forestry Institutions. In: Sachs C, Jensen L, Castellanos P, et al. (eds) Routledge Handbook of Gender and Agriculture. New York: Routledge, pp.15-31.
46. Pyburn R, Kruijssen NJ, F. PA, Arora-Jonsson, S et al. (2020) Gender, agriculture, and shifting food systems under coronavirus global pandemic. In: Sachs C, Jensen L, Castellanos P, et al. (eds) Routledge Handbook of Gender and Agriculture. London: Routledge, pp.435-452.
47. Arora-Jonsson, S. (2019), “Indigeneity and Climate Justice in Northern Sweden” in Bhavnani, K, Foran, J, Kurian, P and Munshi, D (eds), Climate Futures: Reimagining Global Climate Justice, Zed Books. Pgs 82-91. https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/climate-futures/forthcoming/
48. Arora-Jonsson, S. (Convening Lead Author), Agarwal, S, Colfer, C, Keene, S, Kurian, P and Larson, A (2019), “SDG 5: Gender Equality: A Precondition for Sustainable Forestry” in Katila, P, Colfer, C, Jong, W, Galloway, G, Pacheko, P and Winkel, G (eds), Sustainable Development Goals: Their Impacts on Forests and Peoples, Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/sustainable-development-goals-their-impacts-on-forests-and-people/5FA75743F80CCE33751BD2095E5754DC
49. McDermott, C (CLA), Acheampong, E, Arora-Jonsson, S, Asare, R, Jong, W, Hirons, M, Khatun, K, Menton, M, Nunan, F, Poudyal, M and Setyowati, A, (2019), “SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions – A Political Ecology Perspective” in Katila, P, Colfer, C, Jong, W, Galloway, G, Pacheko, P and Winkel, G (eds), Sustainable Development Goals: Their Impacts on Forests and Peoples, Cambridge University Press.
50. Arora-Jonsson, S, (2018) “Across the Development Divide: Environmental Democracy in the global North and South” in Terry Marsden (ed) Sage Handbook of Nature, Vol. 2, 2018. 737-760. https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/the-sage-handbook-of-nature/book242827#description Also translated into Swedish.
51. Arora-Jonsson, S, (2017), “Gender Research and Environmental Policy” in Sherilyn MacGregor (ed.) Routledge International Handbook of Gender and Environment, Chapter 19. https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Gender-and-Environment-1st-Edition/MacGregor/p/book/9780415707749
52. Powell, S and Arora-Jonsson, S, (2015) “The ethics of political correctness” in Nakray, K, Alston, M and Whittenbury, K (eds), Understanding Social Science Research Ethics: Inter-disciplinary and Cross-Cultural Perspectives for a Globalising World, Pgs. 112-139. Routledge, 2015. https://www.crcpress.com/Social-Science-Research-Ethics-for-a-Globalizing-World-Interdisciplinary/Nakray-Alston-Whittenbury/p/book/9780415716222
53. Arora-Jonsson, S, “Beyond Knowledge and Information: Making sense of local governance”, in Rigling Gallagher, Deborah (ed.) Environmental Leadership: A Reference Handbook, Sage Publications. 2012.
54. Arora-Jonsson, S, “A different vantage point: decentralization, women’s organizing and local forest management” in Carol Colfer, Ganga Dahal and Doris Capistrano (eds.) Lessons from Forest Decentralization: Money, Justice and the Quest for Good Governance in the Asia-Pacific, pgs. 49-65. Earthscan, London. 2008.
55. Arora-Jonsson, S,“Shifting images of the community: gender and the local management of forests”, in Ildiko Astalos and Bettina Bock (eds.), Gender Regimes, citizen participation and rural restructuring, Elsevier, Oxford/Amsterdam/San Diego. 2008.
56. Arora-Jonsson, S, “’Women are like boats’: Discourse, policy and collective action” in Naila Kabeer and Agneta Stark (eds.) Global Perspectives on Nordic Approaches to Gender Equality. Routledge, London/New York. 2008.
57. Arora-Jonsson, S, ‘“Research sounds so big..”-Collaborative inquiry with women in Drevdagen’ in Louise Fortmann (ed.) Participatory Research in Conservation: Doing Science Together, pgs. 130-145. Blackwell-Wiley. 2008.
58. Arora-Jonsson, S et al., “Lessons from the case-studies”, in Louise Fortmann (ed.) Participatory Research in Conservation: Doing Science Together, pgs. 245-263. Blackwell-Wiley. 2008.
59. Arora-Jonsson, S, ”Att forska tillsammans” in Britta Wingård och Lars Holmstrand (eds.) Livslångtnyfikenhet – Festskrift till Gunilla Härnsten, Lärarhögskolans Förlag, Stockholm. 2006.
60. Arora-Jonsson, S and Andrea Cornwall, “Making Connections: Learning about Participation in a Large Aid Bureaucracy”, in Rosalind Eyben (ed.), Relationships for Aid, Earthscan, London/Sterling/VA. 2006.
61. Arora-Jonsson, S, “Globalisation, Rurality and Women, Some thoughts on women’s organizing in Sweden and India” in Kjell Havnevik, Tekeste Negash and Atakilte Beyene (eds.) Of Global Concern: Rural Livelihood Dynamics and Natural Resource Governance, Sida Studies, no. 16, Stockholm. 2006.
Think pieces
62. Arora-Jonsson S (2024) Ensuring Accountability for Feminist Climate Justice. Feminist Climate Justice Think Pieces, UN Women. New York.
Reports
63. MacGregor S, Arora-Jonsson S and Cohen M (2022) Caring in a changing climate: Centering care work in climate action, Oxfam International. https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/handle/10546/621353
64. (In Swedish) Katarina Pettersson and Seema Arora-Jonsson, Den osynliga entreprenören: Genus och företagande i de gröna näringarna En litteratur översikt (The invisible entrepreneur: Gender in the green industries and enterprise, A literature review), Report for LRFs Jämställdhetsakademi (Federation of Swedish Farmers’ Academy for Gender Equality), 2009.
Theses
65. Seema Arora-Jonsson, Unsettling the Order: Gendered Subjects and Grassroots Activism in Two Forest Communities, Doctoral Thesis No. 2005:70. Faculty of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences. 2005. http://pub.epsilon.slu.se/885/1/Avhandling_nr_70_2005_Tryckfil.pdf
66. Seema Arora-Jonsson, Constructive Politics in Orissa: Gandhian Organizations and their Legacy, Unpublished Master of Philosophy dissertation (M.Phil). Department of History. University of Delhi, India. March 1995.
Popular Science Articles
67. Arora-Jonsson, S (2025) Climate projects take ‘invisible’ care work for granted: why this needs to change, The Conversation, 12/12/2024
68. Arora-Jonsson S (2020) Hållbarhet och klimaträttvisa: I kölvattnet av det amerikanska valet. In: Bolin N, Falasca K, Grusell M, et al. (eds) Sjärnspäckat: Reflektioner från amerikanska presidentvalet 2020 av ledande forskare. Sweden: Mittuniversitetet.
69. Debate article in national daily, Dagens Nyheter: http://www.dn.se/debatt/informell-inkvotering-av-man-maste-bort-forst/
70. Greta Thunberg and School Climate Strikes: One Question in State of Nature Blog. http://stateofnatureblog.com/one-question-greta-thunberg-school-climate-strikes/?fbclid=IwAR0nm_7Xl2ePETxrJ3A-Gj2JaKbvEEJ3tdp677VnsCgtKgZLzikUH3osnOU.
71. Debate article in daily newspaper Uppsala Nya Tidning: ”Kvinnliga Professorer: en bidrag till en faktabaserad debatt.” https://pren.unt.se/artikel?redirect=https:%2F%2Fwww.unt.se%2Fasikt%2Fdebatt%2Freplik-vaga-referenser-till-laroboksmaterial-5366122.aspx&meter=true&action=completerequest&callback=https:%2F%2Fwww.unt.se%2Finc%2Feprencallback.aspx
72. “The EU needs a stability and wellbeing pact, not more growth,” Guardian, September 16, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/16/the-eu-needs-a-stability-and-wellbeing-pact-not-more-growth
73. ”Vid vilken vägkorsning: Integration och utveckling på landsbygden” (At a Crossroads: Integration and Development in Rural Areas) in Papers from Racism Studies, Centrum för Mångvetenskaplig Forskning om Rasism (Cemfor), Uppsala, 2020.
74. Seema Arora-Jonsson, “Some thoughts on gender, women and climate change,” Journal of Nordregio, No. 4, December 2009.
75. Seema Arora-Jonsson, “Where is the gender in climate change?” Geography and You (www.geographyandyou.com) September-October 2009.
76. Seema Arora-Jonsson, “Networking for dialogue and action, An example from the Forests Trees and People Programme”, Forests Trees and People Newsletter, No.40/41, December 1999 / January 2000.
77. Stina Powell, Seema Arora-Jonsson et al, Debate article in national daily (DN Debatt, 2014): http://www.dn.se/debatt/informell-inkvotering-av-man-maste-bort-forst/
Chapter by co-researchers in a Swedish village on my research
78. Ann Halvarsson, Bergelin, Åsa, Emrettson, Margareta, Lundgren Halvarsson, Anna, Halvarsson, Ewa and Anna Ryen (the Drevdagen kvinnoforum), “För oss en naturen en lisa för själen (Where peace comes dropping slow),” in Louise Fortmann (ed), Participatory Research in Conservation: Doing Science Together, pgs. 146-161. Blackwell-Wiley, 2008.