Jesper Larsson

Jesper’s research is focused on governance of common-pool resources and collective action during early modern period (16th century to 19th century). Jesper conducts research in Sami land-use governance and animal husbandry, especially transhumance systems and the evolution of agriculture systems. Jesper is Affiliated Faculty to The Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Jesper's latest major grant is an ERC consolidator grant (ERC-2023-COG) for the project TransRein, which studies the transition to reindeer pastoralism in northern Eurasia. The project started on January 1, 2025 and will last to the end of 2029.

Jesper's research addresses landscape use and settlement development in Northern Scandinavia during the seventeenth century. The starting point is the leap in the use of common-pool resources and collective action that appeared during the seventeenth century in Northern Scandinavia; large scale reindeer pastoral-nomadism, large scale tar distillation, a sharp increase in firewood and charcoal production, and the development of a new agricultural system based on a transhumance system. Important questions for a better understanding of landscape use and settlement development are; how institutions changed; what type of organizations users developed; implications for property rights; labor division; relations between users and the state; and changes’ in agriculture practice and reindeer breeding.