Klara Fischer

My research concerns how today's sustainability challenges are negotiated and turned into practice, and in particular how marginalised groups are affected. In my ongoing research this is operationalised in research projects concerning for example 

• the discursive dynamics that keep pollinator unfriendly practices in place in European farming, 
•  the knowledge politics of genetically modified and gene edited crops in agriculture
• material and discursive changes resulting from the increasing attention to agriculture as a carbon sink, and 
• bridging medical and local knowledges and values for successful disease outbreak prevention and response 

In these projects I study how proposed policies and technologies are turned into practice and I try to understand the discursive and material structures and processes that lead to certain outcomes for humans and the environment. In many of my projects I work with participatory methods with local communities to co-create bottom-up, locally preferred alternatives to dominant discourses. 

Geographically most of my research is located in Africa (esp. Uganda & South Africa). My research is situated within the fields of political ecology and Science and Technology Studies (STS), drawing broadly on theories from the critical social sciences.  I work with discourse analysis combined with ethnographic and participatory methods. 

Below I outline my research through five central themes. 

Agrarian change and governance of genetically modified crops 

Since they first appeared on the markets and in the public conscious in the late 1990s, GM crops have been an object of contestation within wider debates on food security, sustainability and global environmental change. In several past and ongoing research projects I have studied the discursive contestations and material implications for African smallholder farmers of the role given to GM crops in agrarian change. My empirical attention to GM crops has both stimulated my theoretical interest in knowledge politics, and in multispecies perspectives on agrarian change. One publication where I outline this is the paper Why Africa's New Green Revolution is Failing.  I also explore this theme in two ongoing projects: 

The Properties and Relations of Maize: A multispecies study of the role of crop biotechnology in African smallholder farming, and

The knowledge politics of gene editing in food and agriculture

Decentring yields in agrarian livelihoods 

In South African smallholder agriculture one reason that the introduction of GM maize did not lead to an improvement for rural livelihoods was that agriculture is in decline as a livelihood option. With funding from the South Africa Sweden University Forum and Siani, I have investigated the wider material and discursive structures and processes underlying this trend, and the lived effects in smallholder communities in the Eastern Cape Province. You can read about some of the findings in more detail in the article Social drivers and differentiated effects of deagrarianisation: A longitudinal study of smallholder farming in South Africa's Eastern Cape province 

One conclusion of my work on deagrarianisation in South Africa is that agriculture is important for people, even when its purpose is not first and foremost to maximize yields. This is a finding that resonates across several of my research projects, on smallholder farming in South Africa, as well as Pastoralists' priorities with regard to cattle health. Despite that yields seldom have top priority for smallholders, yields continue to be the centre of attention in agricultural science, technology development, and policy. I have made several efforts to broaden scientific and policy perspectives on the relative importance of yields, for example in a publication on why crop technology is not scale netural, and in another publication together with Joeva Rock about the need for broadening scientific naratives. For an easier digest I also discuss the topic with Martin van Ittersum in this podcast episode. 

Global discourses and lived effects of climate change mitigation and biodiversity loss

A central focus for my research during the past 10 years is how climate change mitigation is discursively negotiated and turned into practice, with a specific focus on the lived effects for smallholder farmers and local environments in Uganda. In our past research, a conclusion was that climate change mitigation took precedence over other environmental and livelihood concerns, with material effects of undermining both local biodiversity and livelihoods. This report also summarises some of the findings.

More recently biodiversity loss has sailed up alongside climate change as a key object of attention in global environmental debates. The increased attention to biodiversity on the global agenda can make it more difficult to implement climate change mitigation in ways that undermines biodiversity. At the same time, the centrality of biodiversity loss, like climate change, in global environmental discourse has material impacts in terms of shaping policies and shifting investment priorities. I am interested in the wider implications of this for rural livelihoods, environmental governance and agrarian change. In an ongoing project I am  analysing the knowledge politics and lived effects of an investment in biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation in Uganda. In another project funded by the EU Horizon projects Safeguard and Valor, we investigate biodiversity governance through the lens of pollinators aiming to unravel some of the discursive dynamics at play in keeping pollinator-unfriendly practices in place in European agriculture. You can read a bit about the ongoing work here.

More recently my research on climate change mitigation has also turned to the increased attention to farming as a climate measure, ‘carbon farming’ in wider patterns of agrarian change.  I am interested in how carbon farming is discursively constructed and negotiated in global agricultural policies and markets, and how it is conceptualised and valued by farmers and integrated into their farming practices.

Bridging medical and local knowledges and values for successful disease outbreak prevention and response in marginalised communities in the human-wildlife interphase. 

The global experience of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the increasingly well-known concept of “one-health” has made the general public, environmental policy makers and academics increasingly aware of the complex relations between human and animal diseases and global environmental change. In several past and ongoing research projects I have worked with veterinarians and epidemiologists to better understand local and practical understandings of disease and the relations between local and medical knowledge systems, values and priorities. Most of this research has concerned smallholder and pastoralist systems, and livestock disease. More recently I also work on a project focusing on the environmental, social and knowledge dynamics of Ebola. My work with veterinarians and epidemiologists has also stimulated my thinking on inter and transdisciplinary work.

Theory and method development for inter- and transdisciplinary, and participatory research 

My research interests have often led me into interdisciplinary collaborations, which is both fruitful and challenging and has triggered my interest in methods and methodologies for interdisciplinary and participatory work. In my work with veterinarians and epidemiologists a specific focus has been to develop methodologies for the integration of local practical knowledge, social-  and veterinary sciences. This work has for example resulted in a special issue on participatory epidemiology. In a recently completed project I lead funded by the Interdisciplinary academy- IDA, at SLU, we explored the ontologies, epistemologies and values guiding key academic discourses on sustainable agriculture. 

If you want to know more about my work, you can find my publications here: 

• Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=ZoDyUlIAAAAJ 
• Web of Science: https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/record/1099997 
• Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6590-4025

 I teach and supervise students at the Master’s programmes in Rural Development and Natural Resource Management and Environmental Communication and Management. I currently lead the two courses  Engaging Critically with Environmental Governance Practices and The Process of Research: Qualitative Methods, Data Analysis and Academic Writing

I also lead PhD coruses on Critical Perspectives on Agrarian Change and Qualitative Methodology and Research Design 

I regularly supervise Master students in Environmental Communication and Management,  Rural Development and Natural Resource Management, and in Agroecology. I have supervised 18 MSc students to completion. Students' topics range from a policy analysis of the greening of the CAP, or of the role given to Swedish forests in the bioeconomy, to ethnographic studies of biosecurity in smallholder pig farming. I have developed a method for thesis supervision in groups, where students benefit both from peer support and from getting more diverse and extensive feedback on their work than I experience as possible in one-to-one supervision. 

Main supervisor: 

PhD student Teresa Sarasa Nagore, Department of Urban and Rural Development, SLU, Thesis topic:. The Properties and Relations of Maize: A multispecies study of the role of crop biotechnology in African smallholder farming. Admitted to PhD education 2025-04-14

Christoffer Söderlund Kanarp, Department of Urban and Rural Development, SLU, Thesis topic: From imagination to practical consciousness – Meaning making in climate change adaptation. Thesis defended 10 October, 2024. Published online: https://pub.epsilon.slu.se/35207/1/soderlund-kanarp-g-c-20240920.pdf 

Anna Arvidsson, Department of Urban and Rural Development, SLU, Smallholders and pigs in northern Uganda Anna Arvidsson An ethnographic study of pig rearing, disease management and local knowledges. Thesis defended 15 June, 2023. Published online: https://pub.epsilon.slu.se/31012/1/arvidsson-a-20230523.pdf 

Assistant supervisor:

PhD student Aphiwe Mkhongi, Dep. of Geography, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Thesis topic: Deagrarianisation of South Africa’s former homelands, a comparative study. Admitted to PhD education 2020

PhD student Nora Förell, Department of Urban and Rural Development, SLU, Thesis working title The constitution of knowledge and values in the discursive struggle over the governance of the green transition. Admitted to PhD education 2024

Sara Lysholm, Department of Clinical Sciences, SLU, Thesis topic: Crossing the line – Tracking transboundary diseases in small ruminants at farms and markets along the Tanzania-Zambia border. Thesis defended 3 December, 2021.  Published online: https://pub.epsilon.slu.se/26083/1/lysholm_s_211110.pdf 

Suvi Kokko, Department of Economics, SLU, Transforming society through multi-level dynamics – The case of social entrepreneurship in the sanitation sector. Thesis defended 22 May, 2019. Published online: https://pub.epsilon.slu.se/16111/

Linda Engström, Department of Urban and Rural Development, SLU, Development Delayed: Exploring the failure of a large-scale agricultural investment in Tanzania to deliver expected outcomes, Tanzania. Thesis defended 21 September, 2018. Published online: https://pub.epsilon.slu.se/15590/ 

I am currently Vice Dean for Internationalisation, Faculty of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences. (2025-05-01- 2028-03-31). Previous commissions of trust I have held include: 

• Director of studies for PhD education (2021-07-01 to 2022-12-31). 
• Acting chair for rural development in the global South, SLU (2021‐12‐01‐ 2022-07-31) 
• Chair of the election committee for the NJ faculty, SLU (2021-2024)
• Member of the SLU election committee (2021-2024)