The Working Groups

Skills provision has increasingly been framed as a decisive and necessary condition for sustainable regional development and for maintaining competitiveness across both the private and public sectors. This challenge is particularly pronounced in peripheral and sparsely populated regions, where demographic shifts, out‑migration, and structural labour-market changes intersect with the escalating demand for labour associated with the “green transition”. Northern Sweden, alongside other rural areas across the Nordic region, is currently experiencing substantial pressures regarding labour shortages. New jobs, new competencies, and strategies for broader recruitment make skills provision a central issue in both private and public sectors. Remote work and other flexible work arrangements have been promoted as possible means to address these challenges by expanding recruitment pools and counteracting geographic constraints. At the same time, the location where work is performed can influence how the work and the worker are perceived and valued. Flexible forms of work also introduce organisational challenges, including weakened knowledge transfer, reduced opportunities for informal collaboration, diminished creativity, and the risk of exacerbating gendered and other structural inequalities within organisations.

This working group invites contributions that critically engage with issues of work, recruitment, and workforce retention in rural contexts. If flexible work arrangements are to function as sustainable components of long‑term skills provision, a nuanced understanding of both their potentials and their limitations is essential. This includes the development of strategies and methodologies that promote socially sustainable and gender‑equal organisational environments.

We therefore welcome papers that offer renewed conceptual, methodological, or empirical perspectives on work, skills provision, and flexible work arrangements in rural areas. Contributions that engage explicitly with gender equality, social justice, or intersectional dimensions of labour and regional development are particularly encouraged.

We invite submissions from scholars at all career stages and across disciplinary boundaries. Both theoretical and empirical contributions are welcome, intending to collectively deepen and advance discussions on the theme of this working group.

Coordinators 

Lena Grip, Department of Geography, Media & Communication, Karlstad University, lena.grip@kau.se 

Ulrika Jansson, Swedish Secretariat for Gender Research, University of Gothenburg, ulrika.jansson@genus.gu.se 

Maria Bogren, Nord University Business School, maria.bogren@nord.no 

Housing is a key factor for the transformation of rural areas. Across many rural regions, housing systems are shaped by overlapping and often contradictory processes: depopulation and ageing populations, second-home development, new forms of multilocal living and distance work, rising housing costs in attractive landscapes, and the persistence of vacant or abandoned dwellings in others. At the same time, housing policies, societal discourse, and planning frameworks often remain urban-focused.

This working group invites contributions that place housing at the centre of debates on rural and regional development. Rather than treating housing as a secondary outcome of economic change, the group approaches rural housing and housing markets as systems that actively shape who can live in rural areas, under what conditions, and with what consequences for local communities.

We welcome theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions addressing themes such as:

• rural housing markets and real estate issues,
• planning and governance of rural housing,
• abandoned and vacant dwellings,
• second homes and multilocal living,
• sustainable housing solutions and adaptation,
• housing inequalities.

The aim of the working group is twofold. First, it seeks to bring together researchers working on rural housing across disciplinary boundaries, for example, architecture, economics, engineering, ethnology, geography, heritage studies, and sociology. Second, it aims to advance conceptual discussions about how housing can be better integrated into broader understandings of rural transformation and sustainable regional development.

By foregrounding housing as a central component of rural futures, the working group hopes to contribute to new ways of understanding and acting upon the challenges and opportunities facing rural areas today.

Coordinators

Andreas Back, Department of Geography, Umeå University, andreas.back@umu.se 

Josefina Syssner, Centre for Local Government Studies, Linköping University, josefina.syssner@liu.se 

Significant transformations are taking place in rural regions across Sweden. Climate policy, green industrialisation, energy expansion and new conservation initiatives are changing patterns of land use and putting pressure on landscapes and natural resources. These changes are particularly visible in northern regions but affect rural areas across the country, where various interests such as agriculture, forestry, energy production, tourism, conservation and Indigenous land use intersect with national and global sustainability agendas.

At the same time, digital technologies are playing an increasingly important role in how landscapes are monitored, understood and governed. Satellite data, sensors, machine learning, digital mapping tools and data platforms are becoming integral to environmental monitoring, land use planning and regional development. While these technologies offer the promise of improved knowledge and more efficient decision-making, they also raise important questions about participation, access to data, and the sources of knowledge that inform environmental governance. 

Digital technologies influence how landscapes and its inhabitants of all species are seen, represented, and understood and consequently how land use decisions are made. As technological systems become increasingly embedded in land-use planning and environmental management, questions arise regarding the recognition, negotiation, and integration of different knowledge systems — scientific, local, and Indigenous.

This session explores the interaction between the digitalisation of landscapes and ongoing rural and regional transformations, including but not limited to the role of local knowledge, community perspectives and Indigenous land use in digitally mediated forms of governance. We invite contributions examining the role of digital technologies in shaping rural landscapes, land use governance and regional development processes. Relevant topics may include:

• Digital tools and data infrastructures in rural landscapes

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  Digital land-use governance and competing interests in rural regions

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  Indigenous land use and knowledge in the digitisation of environmental management

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  Community participation and local perspectives in digital environmental initiatives

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  Rural knowledge practices involving machine learning and other AI applications

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  Power relations, data ownership and governance in rural digitalisation

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  Multispecies relationships in light of datafication

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  Rural innovation and regional development in the context of environmental transitions

By bringing together empirical research and critical perspectives, the session will contribute to discussions on the intersection of technological change and social, cultural and institutional dynamics in rural regions undergoing profound transformation.

Coordinators

Kajsa Kuoljok, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Science, kajsa.kuoljok@slu.se 

Malte Rödl, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Science, malte.rodl@slu.se
 

Swedish coasts and seas are threatened by multiple environmental pressures caused by the growth of modern societies. Nevertheless, some coastal areas manage to withstand these pressures. These places are often situated in relatively remote places, such as in archipelagos and islands, and characterised by a distinct and strong integration of geo- and biocultural diversity. Traditional practices, such as gleaning or archipelago fishing, which from a neoliberal perspective are considered 'economically marginal,' 'outdated,' or 'backward, can due to their low-impact preserve a variated coastal landscape that can host fish nurseries, migratory birds, and halophytic plants. 

Precisely this diversity forms an important source for blue transformation; they contain potential for alternative development trajectories and help to avoid overrelying on the false idea that single, generic, optimal solutions exist. Still, the value of these coastal and island refugia for transformation remains underresearched and misunderstood. We do not yet understand e.g. why some manage to remain intact under pressure, while others collapse. 

For this working group session, we invite research on the significance of coastal and island diversity for transformative change. We are curious to learn from these examples, i.e. what they entail, why they have transformative potential, but also how they have been discovered and studied, and how their potential can be used without threatening the integrity of people and places. Bringing together studies on these aspects of coastal and island diversity we expect to uncover, describe and understand practices and interdependencies between human culture, coasts, and seas that will reveal how things can be done and thought differently; making transformation possible.

Coordinator

Wijnand Boonstra, Department of Earth Sciences; Natural Resources and Sustainable Development, Uppsala University,  wijnand.boonstra@geo.uu.se 

Sweden’s implementation of the EU Nature Restoration Directive has highlighted a tension between supranational ambition and domestic minimalism. While the directive sets clear ecological targets, Swedish policy to date signals limited political will, opting for minimum compliance rather than transformative change. This panel explores the possibilities of nature restoration as an emerging force reshaping ruralities, with variegated effects on individuals, land-owners, rural communities, companies and governance actors at municipal, regional and national levels. We explore the meanings of restoration as a socioenvironmental approach with wide-ranging possibilities to undo damage done by decades of ‘modernist’ interventions in the ways that resources and environments are used, extracted and discarded in rural areas.

Established nature restoration practice typically relies on environmental planning perspectives or subsidy schemes that support farmers in implementing restoration measures on their own land. These efforts are often coordinated and handled through top-down, EU funded programmes, and based on expert-driven implementation and monitoring with at best limited social considerations, forms of participation and modes of governance. Yet, alternative, bottom up as well as local and regional approaches are becoming widespread. Smaller and larger landowners experiment with alternative land management practices on their own, with or without funding, together with civil society organisations supporting initiatives like wetland or meadow restoration alongside more formal state-led restoration activities. Other initiatives reach beyond individual landowners and farmers to consider entire watersheds, nature protection areas and forests by mutual cooperation among interest groups, land owners, civil society organisations, companies and regional authorities. Seen in this perspective the EU Nature Restoration Directive is just one aspect of the emerging multitude of ways in which natures, and with them rural societies, are sought to be ‘repaired’, improved upon or regenerated, toward different ends and goals.

This panel brings together researchers and practitioners to address three core questions: (1) What forms of engagement are most appropriate at different scales to produce durable as well as desirable restoration outcomes? (2) How can social incentives and governance mechanisms be aligned to move beyond Sweden’s minimalist implementation toward genuine socioecological recovery? (3) What social effects are emerging from the present focus on restoring natures, and how may nature restoration contribute to values and aspirations of land owners, users and/or human well-being? Contributions are welcome to address these questions from social science or interdisciplinary perspectives.

Coordinators

Patrik Oskarsson, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Science, patrik.oskarsson@slu.se 

Emil Sandström, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Science, emil.sandstrom@slu.se

Harry Fischer, Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Science, harry.fischer@slu.se 

Rural areas are deeply entangled with wider local, regional, national, and global processes, rather than being isolated pockets of social and economic life. Building on this, the “Rural Entrepreneurial Ecosystem and Value Chains in Transition” working group invites contributions that place firm actors at the forefront while situating them in a broader context of places, policies, and power relations. We are especially interested in how rural entrepreneurial ecosystems intersect with value chains in times of climate, demographic, and economic transitions, and how these intersections shape tensions between growth and sustainability.

We understand rural entrepreneurial ecosystems as configurations of interconnected actors – firms, individuals, community organizations, intermediaries, and policymakers – located in specific places yet linked across space and place. These ecosystems support and constrain value creation, innovation, organizational change, and sustainable business practices, but are also exposed to shifting regulations, markets, and narratives about sustainable development. At the same time, rural firms are embedded in value chains that span multiple regions and countries, where decisions by upstream or downstream actors may redistribute risks, responsibilities, and opportunities, thereby directly influencing the evolution and dynamics of rural areas.

By bringing together ecosystem and value chain perspectives, this working group seeks to capture complex, multi-level, and contested relationships in which rural firms are simultaneously dependent, creative, and vulnerable. We welcome theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions that, for example, trace long-term embedded relations within and between firms, examine how new forms of organizing or collaboration emerge, or explore how collective action, local mobilization, and experimentation rework existing value chains. Such work can advance critical understandings of rural development and inform policies and practices that support transformative and sustainable outcomes in ruralities and regions in transition.

Coordinator

Henrik Dellestrand, Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, henrik.dellestrand@slu.se 

Migration policy in Sweden is currently undergoing a ‘paradigm shift’. This shift has transformed Swedish migration and integration policy through a multitude of legislative changes and reforms that restrict both refugee and labour migration, at the same time as conditions for persons with a migrant background in Sweden is increasingly marked by deportability, temporariness and conditionality. While this ‘paradigm shift’ ostensibly lacks any substantial opposition at central level of governance, we are beginning to witness more acts of resistance, not least by municipalities and their vocal refusal to assist the central government in implementation of ‘voluntary return’ policies. In this working group we wish to centre the role of the rural in these contested trajectories, asking how rural realities can form sites of resistance towards hostile national politics. 

For many rural localities, refugee placement has been crucial in maintaining local welfare through both labour and consumption. Sectors such as agriculture and forestry that form the socioeconomic backbone of rural areas are dependent on migrants to supply ‘essential’ labour. For migrants themselves, life in rural areas is often characterized by contradictory notions of being seen, but not quite belonging. Regimes of whiteness and fantasies of homogeneity as well as narratives of boundedness and of being left-behind pose challenges to social integration. At the same time, place-attachment, close-knit communities and political engagement brought by histories of mobilization provide potential for more equitable inclusion of new residents. 

The aim of this working group is to critically examine the role of the rural in the ongoing ‘paradigm shift’ in Sweden. Changes in migration policy demands attention to conflicts between national and local governance and their consequence for everyday rural lives, including how municipalities are affected by volatile migration policy or the entanglements between uneven regional development and far-right support. We believe these changes also provide opportunity to think about rural areas as sites of resistance towards exclusionary and anti-migrant policy. This resistance may call into arms a variety of actors and purposes, ranging from capacity building in municipal organisations to local community engagement and new perspectives brought by migrants. We invite papers that explore rural and regional development in light of the ongoing ‘paradigm shift’, bringing into conversation diverse forms of migration and meanings of resistance, in order to explore mobilizations, barriers and potentials for a more inclusive and politically charged rural development. 

Coordinators 

Emma Sahlström, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Science, emma.sahlstrom@slu.se 

Ellen Rahm, Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO), Linköping University, ellen.rahm@liu.se 

Rural communities are expected to deliver green transitions they did not design — through their land, their labour, and their local knowledge — while bearing costs that governance frameworks were not built to see. This working group examines why, tracing three interconnected problems across rural contexts in both the Global South and Global North.

The first is a problem of authority. National and EU climate ambitions set the terms — what gets built, where, and how fast — but rural communities absorb the consequences: landscapes transformed by extraction and green-transition infrastructure. In Swedish rural governance, responsibility for transition implementation is routinely devolved to local actors without corresponding authority, while commitments to inclusion thin out as they travel down governance levels. This is not a coordination failure. It is a structural feature of how transitions are designed. 

The second is a problem of visibility. The daily work of managing energy, food, and water — performed across households and communities — is carried out disproportionately by women and marginalised groups and goes unrecognised in the transition governance frameworks. In the Swedish context, just transition visions remain rooted in male-dominated, technology-focused sectors, while care work is treated as support for industrial mobility rather than a core transition component.

The third is a problem of learning. Communities in the Global South have been resisting these patterns for decades, building grassroots governance innovations at the intersection of livelihood insecurity, gender injustice and climate impact. Yet good practice from the Global South is rarely studied as a learning resource for the Global North. This working group sets out to address that gap.

Sweden’s green transition offers a sharp lens on dynamics that are global: governance structures that sideline rural communities, care work that goes uncounted. We invite abstracts from researchers working at the intersection of gender, care, and rural green transitions to jointly interrogate these blind spots. We ask: How do gender and care reshape our understanding of rural green transitions? And what can reciprocal North–South dialogue reveal that neither region’s scholarship can produce alone? We welcome contributions that diagnose how these problems operate, or document how communities have responded — building alternative governance arrangements, making care labour visible, or crossing the Global South–Global North knowledge divide on their own terms. We also welcome contributions grounded in Global North contexts that draw on insights across the North–South knowledge divide.

Coordinators

Kavya Michael, RISE Research Institutes, kavyaclaramichael@gmail.com 

Kennedy Mbeva, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge, km937@cam.ac.uk 

Research on segregation has traditionally focused on metropolitan areas, where social and economic inequalities are spatially divided. However, ethnic, socio-economic and spatial segregation also occur in rural areas. Demographic change, migration, economic restructuring, and transformations in housing and labour markets are reshaping many rural areas, potentially producing new patterns of spatial inequality. Despite this, segregation in rural contexts remains comparatively underexplored, particularly from a quantitative perspective.

This working group aims to advance the study of segregation in rural areas with quantitative methods. We invite contributions that use quantitative methods to analyse the measurement, patterns, drivers, and consequences of segregation in rural areas. Papers may examine segregation along different dimensions, including income, ethnicity, education, age, or employment status. Contributions exploring how segregation interacts with housing markets, labour market structures, access to services, mobility patterns, or regional policy goals are also welcome.

We encourage papers employing a range of quantitative approaches and data sources. Data sources may include register-based datasets or data collected from surveys. Methods ranging from spatial statistics, segregation indices, geospatial analysis, or other statistical and computational methods are invited.

The working group also welcomes comparative perspectives across regions or countries, as well as studies that examine segregation patterns over time. Contributions may be case studies, cross-regional comparisons, or broader national or international analyses.

By bringing together researchers working with quantitative approaches to rural segregation, this working group seeks to foster discussion on both empirical findings and methodological challenges. The aim is to improve our understanding of spatial inequalities in rural areas and to contribute to broader debates on rural transformation, regional development, and social cohesion.

Coordinator 

Cecilia Hammarlund, AgriFood Economics Centre, Lunds University, cecilia.hammarlund@agrifood.lu.se 

To achieve national and global climate targets and phase out fossil fuels, a rapid expansion of renewable energy is needed. However, clean energy technologies, such as solar, wind, and batteries, rely both on land and minerals and in these dimensions, the transition can have profound impacts on local environments and communities. These developments raise important justice dilemmas, including the distribution of externalities and benefits, as well as procedural justice concerns related to the inclusiveness and transparency of planning and decision-making processes.

Energy investments and mineral extraction can also intrude on landscapes, affecting the lifestyles, identities, and cultural values of local populations, including indigenous peoples and rural communities, highlighting issues of recognitional justice. The use of local environments may generate conflicts between local and national interests, across different stakeholders and communities, and among social, economic, and environmental priorities. Renewable infrastructure development and mineral extraction may also pose challenges to biodiversity and local ecosystems if undertaken without careful environmental consideration. Tensions can arise across multi-level governance, involving local, national, and EU-level decision-making.

At the same time, the climate and energy transition presents opportunities for local development, prosperity, and empowerment, including ways to address energy poverty and social exclusion through approaches such as energy communities, revenue sharing, local ownership models, or broader energy democracy and transition frameworks. Many climate and energy solutions offer multiple co-benefits, including economic, social, and health improvements. Identifying strategies, policies and governance models that ensure justice, legitimacy, and democratic inclusion is therefore critical, not only for achieving climate and energy targets, but also for advancing broader societal development.

This workshop invites researchers to explore perspectives on justice, inclusion, and legitimacy in local climate and energy transformations. We welcome contributions from all social research disciplines, using various methodologies, including qualitative, quantitative, and participatory approaches.

Coordinator

Daniel Lindvall, Department for Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, and the Institute for Futures Studies, Stockholm, daniel.lindvall@geo.uu.se

Development may mean different things in different settings. Rural and regional development has diverse but specific meanings in policy and in the practices of public officials employed to carry out interventions to support development. Development also has specific, and sometimes other meanings, for people living and working in rural areas. Other conceptualizations of development may inform how research is designed or how we teach development in academia. 

What conceptualizations of development informs policy and practice, and what conceptualizations comes out as results of novel research of today? How should policy, practice and academia interact when differences in how development is conceptualized may clash? 

In this working group we invite contributions that tackle the task of understanding and conceptualising rural development in novel ways for current times. It could be empirical studies of how development is conceptualized, but we specially encourage theoretical and philosophical discussions on rural and regional development. We also welcome reflections based on personal experiences of working with development issues in practice as well as contributions engaging with how we teach development in academia. 

The contributions may draw on a broad variety of taught on development. ‘Development’ as a concept have been theorised within social science for decades. Whether it be part of discussions of societal transformation in grand theories, a set of tools for socio-economic betterment or critiqued as methods of suppression and neocolonialism within post-development discourses, development always seem to mean changes in life. For rural areas and rural regions, both framed as spaces that are the cornerstones of sustainable development in relation to the ‘green’ transition, and as peripheral places left-behind, ideas of what development means intersect and sometimes clashes. Concepts like endogenous, exogenous and nexogenous/neo-endogenous development are recurring in policy text that targets rural regions and hints at the challenges of top-down and bottom-up practices and perspectives meet in just and democratic ways. Clearly, ‘development’ is a sticky and contested concept that can be framed in many ways, but what does it mean for the rural today and can theorising it anew help us understand the future for rural areas in Sweden?  

Coordinators

Patrik Cras, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Science, patrik.cras@slu.se

Arvid Stiernström, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Science, arvid.stiernstrom@slu.se

Society is undergoing significant demographic changes as the proportion of older adults increases, creating growing demands for senior housing, health care, and social services in both rural and urban regions. In many areas, there is already a shortage of suitable and age-adapted housing, while planning processes, resources, and cross-sector coordination remain limited.

At the same time, perspectives on ageing are shifting from a focus on illness to promoting healthy, active, and independent living. The concept of “age optimization” highlights how living environments, social interaction, and welfare technologies can support health, quality of life, and participation in later life.

This working group “Age-Optimized Living Environments” invites contributions that explore how senior housing and living environments can be designed, organized, and developed to support healthy and active ageing in both rural and urban regions. The working group will focus on how senior housing environments can be designed and organized to support independence, well-being, and social participation among older adults in rural regions. Ultimately, the initiative seeks to support both individual well-being and broader social and economic sustainability for ageing in rural and urban regions.

We welcome interdisciplinary perspectives and encourage contributions from academia, as well as from practitioners in municipalities, industry, and civil society.

We particularly invite papers that address:

• innovative models of senior housing and age-adapted environments 
• the role of welfare technologies in supporting independent living 
• social design and opportunities for participation in later life
• organizational, management and business models in senior housing 
• collaboration between sectors in rural contexts 
• entrepreneurial models of building, financing and managing senior housing

Both empirical and conceptual papers are welcome, including work-in-progress and case-based studies. Contributions may focus on research findings, practical implementations, or methodological approaches related to ageing and living environments.

The working group aims to foster dialogue and knowledge exchange across disciplines and sectors. By bringing together diverse perspectives, the session seeks to contribute to the development of sustainable and transferable approaches to senior housing and ageing in rural and urban regions.

Coordinators

Petter Ahlström, Division of Business Administration, University West petter.ahlstrom@hv.se 

Ann Svensson, Division of Informatics, University West, ann.svensson@hv.se

A regional hospital is about to be closed and suddenly access to healthcare shifts hundreds of kilometres away. A wildfire sweeps the land, transforming the landscape, the economy and social relations as history burns and the future becomes uncertain. A global corporation announces an industrial project that makes claims to both labour and nature and may cause irrevocable changes to the environment. These are all examples of disruptive events, both potential and actual, that shape rural futures in Sweden. In this session we regard these disruptions, that portend both material and social change as open moments: as events where established structures are brought to the surface, become contested and give cause for political mobilisation and change.  In this sense, open moments are productive spaces where new actors, networks, alliances and lines of conflict emerge. What can these moments teach us about the actors and relations that shape rural space?

By engaging with open moments and the multiplicity of ways through which rural space is territorialised, i.e. claimed for political projects, this panel discusses how topics, issues or questions become politicised, debated, and are claimed by different groups, all of which have implications for rural development. We call for papers that 

• Focus on the various ways rural space is (re)territorialised by a multiplicity of actors in times of transition, actors that may both choose to abstain or position themselves and take charge within the open moment. Who emerge as agents for change and who are left out in shaping development trajectories?
• Take an interest in how actors and places are joined across scales, as actors form or connect to social movements, resistance networks, government institutions, media narratives and so on.  
• The panel invites contributions across disciplines, with a focus on empirically grounded work in rural areas. The papers can both have a methodological and/or theoretical emphasis and be in all stages of development.   

Coordinator

Arvid Stiernström, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Science, arvid.stiernstrom@slu.se

This panel is for contributions that resonates with the main theme of the conference but does not fit into the other working group topics.  

We welcome proposals in all stages of development that focuses on renewing thought in rural and/or regional development. Accepted submissions will be formed into sessions by the conference organizers based thematic connections between the submissions. 

Coordinator

Arvid Stiernström, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Science, arvid.stiernstrom@slu.se