Programme

Data handling in R

The course aims at improving the effectiveness of the R code you write by introducing you to a range of functions that allow you to manipulate your data. In particular the course will teach you how to write more ordered code that can be easily reused and incorporated into other projects and to deal with the automation of data and code handling tasks. This will allow you to save time and handle bigger datasets.

• Course dates: 9 March, 25 March, 9 April and 24 April.

Application

Apply for the course no later than 2 March 2026 by sending an email to Alistair Auffret (alistair.auffret@slu.se).

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Data Handling with R

Introduction to cropping systems

Are you a PhD student curious about how agriculture connects to sustainability but lack a formal background in agricultural sciences? This course offers a comprehensive introduction to cropping systems, showing smallholder polycultures to intensive, high-tech systems, in tropical and temperate regions. By linking biophysical principles with social, geographical, and some economic dimensions, the course invites you to explore how cropping systems evolve, function, and impact the environment. You'll engage with debates on food, fiber and fuel production, sustainability, and system resilience—while connecting these issues to your own research.

• 4 ECTS
• Start: 20 April, End: 4 May
• Course is Online on zoom, 14:00-17:00
• Speed: full time

What you will learn:

• The diversity and evolution of cropping systems across climatic zones;
• How cropping intensity, specialization, and market orientation shape farming systems;
• Environmental and ecological dimensions of cropping systems, including externalities and resilience;
• Principles of agroecological, organic, and integrated systems;
• Ways to connect your own research with real-world challenges in crop production and sustainability.

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More information: Introduction to cropping systems.

Time & Sustainability

Sustainable transformations cannot be understood from one disciplinary perspective alone. Ecologists and climate scientists need to work alongside political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists and environmental communications specialists, yet students rarely get the chance to do this in a sustained way. In this course, you will explore one of the most rapidly growing topics in sustainability debates: the question of time. You will learn to identify how temporal assumptions shape your own research practices and your discipline’s approach to research, and to use different tools to notice and make visible the competing human and multi-species temporalities involved in sustainability transitions and transformations. You will also learn to support critical reflection on how timing mechanisms and practices shape academic and social debates about sustainability issues. At the same time, the course will help you work creatively with different tools to diagnose how time is at play in your own research and open up new ways of working with time in your study. You will also become more comfortable working in interdisciplinary teams, recognising and learning from different perspectives and methods.

• 1.5 ECTS
• Dates 27 May (online afternoon), 2–5 June
• Stockholm & Uppsala
• Application open until 6 May

To apply: Write a 500-word application outlining your current research projects in approx. 200 words and explaining in approx. 300 words, what draws you to this topic and to the interdisciplinary nature of the course. Applications should be submitted to both Keri Facer (keri.facer@bristol.ac.uk) and Åsa Berggren (asa.berggren@slu.se) by 6 May.

Understanding & Implementing Ecological Models: Bayesian analyses from beginnings to hierarchical complexity

In this course you will learn how to build your own statistical models (and actually understand them!) and once-for-all avoid all those annoying assumptions that have plagued your modelling to date (Normality assumptions gone! Homogeneity of variances gone!). You will also never have to look at an annoying p-value ever again (they don’t mean what you think they mean). Missing data…no problems! Leave the dark side of statistics and soon you’ll be saying 'may the Bayesian force be with you' :)

This course will run during September - November 2026. In September and October we will meet on zoom for 5x2-hourly sessions to cover the basics of theory and to get you starting building models. Then in November 2-6 we will meet in the classroom for a week of intensive Bayesian fun (and fika!). For those of you who can’t join in the classroom or during any of the other sessions, all course material has been prerecorded and you can work through it at your own pace. Yes, there is something for everyone!

If you are interested in joining the course (either remotely or in person), contact me (Matt) at matt.low@slu.se. Spaces in the classroom are limited (Nov 2-6), so contact me soon to get a place. If you plan on only joining remotely for the course, there will be space for everyone.  

Climate Change and the Ocean

The course is fully booked.

Introduction to lichens

The aim of the course is to provide new PhD students and postdoctoral researchers who, in some way, include lichens in their studies with an introduction to various aspects of lichen symbiosis, morphology and ecology. Participants may not have worked with lichens before, or may have worked only on a particular aspect of lichens, and wish to gain a broader general understanding of lichens as a subject of scientific research.

• 3 ECTS
• Course date: 25 September to 1 October 2026
• Application deadline: 31 August. 

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Introduction to lichens

Plant growth analysis and nutrient use efficiency

• Autumn 2026
• Online
• 3 ECTS