Hanna Bergeå

I act as Head of Division for Environmental Communication and work as a researcher in Environmental Communication.

I am interested in understanding social interaction and its importance for how we understand and manage natural resources. I defended my thesis on agricultural extension conversations in agriculture, which combines my interest in how people approach each other, communicate, negotiate about knowledge and values with my interest for agriculture and biodiversity. Today, I mainly research dialogue processes and how people understand each other, try to agree and make decisions on complex issues related to natural resources. I am interested in trust in processes where the parties have different opinions on important issues and how this trust (or lack thereof) is expressed and developed in the interaction. My research also examines how emotions such as hope are used and expressed in relation to various environmental crises that we are facing.

I teach in the master program Environmental Communication and Management and supervise master thesis students on a yearly basis.

I have a strong engagement for external collaboration, since I am convinced that the complex challenges of our times need to be addressed in the interface between the academy and the surrounding society. In my research projects, I work in close cooperation with the people and organisations that the research is about. Until April 2019 was Vice Dean for external collaboration at the Faculty. This entailed, in addition to being part of the leadership of the Faculty, that I have been encouraging colleagues at SLU to collaborate more with our surrounding society and that I worked to improve the conditions for people to make this collaboration happen. I have contributed to the development of a course in leadership in external collaboration and to the development of a merit portfolio for external collaboration. In the research programme Mistra Environmental Communication we collaborate with around twenty societal actors and I have coordinated our work with the so called think/do tanks where we develop and test ways to make environmental communication. I am one of the SLU experts in "Kunskapsrådet" for Baltic Sea Science Center – a science center focusing on the challenges around the Baltic Sea.