Stephanie Leder

Stephanie's latest research explores community-managed irrigation systems in contexts of rural out-migration in Nepal, the feminization of agriculture and collective action in natural resource governance. She currently leads two projects:

Revitalizing community-managed irrigation systems in contexts of out-migration in Nepal (FORMAS, 4.5 Mio. SEK, 2019-2027)

This project is a Mobility Grant of FORMAS, the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning with collaborations as visiting scientist/fellow at IDE (UK), UBC (Canada), SIAS (Nepal) and UNU-EHS (Germany).

The Future of Agrarian Mountain Livelihoods (FAML): Youth Aspirations and Irrigation Modernisation in Nepal (FORMAS, 4 Mio. SEK, 2024-2028)

This project aims to generate a new understanding of how water resource governance can become more youth-inclusive. It's a 4-year early career FORMAS grant project in collaboration with Gitta Shrestha as PhD student, Dr Marien Gonzalez-Hidalgo (SLU) and Dr Amina Maharjan (ICIMOD) and Prof. Jonathan Rigg (Bristol).

Stephanie is also the Study Director of the Research School "People, Society and Sustainability" at SLU. 

From 2014-2017 she was a Postdoctoral Fellow for Gender, Poverty and Institutions at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in Nepal, and led studies in inter- and transdisciplinary projects within the Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Program “Water, Land and Ecosystems” in India, Nepal and Bangladesh.

My research explores marginalization processes in natural resource governance and rural development. I combine social and environmental justice scholarship with feminist political ecology, critical development, collective action and commons studies to explore just socio-ecological transformations. My work in South Asia and more recently Europe promotes insights into processes of social exclusion due to intersections of gender, age, ethnicity, class and caste characteristics at multiple scales (household, village, district, development programming, national and policy level). 

Please visit my homepage: stephanieleder.com

Gitta Shrestha (SLU): Youth Aspirations and Irrigation Modernisation in Nepal (FORMAS, main supervisor)

Mia Ågren (SLU): Rethinking Landscape Justice at the Intersections of Densification and Urban Greening in Uppsala municipality, Sweden (FORMAS, co-supervisor)

Sarthak Shukla (SLU/IIIT Hyderabad): The end of coal and the future of land: Transformative mine closures for just and sustainable livelihoods in India (Vetenskapsrådet, Swedish Research Council, co-supervisor)

Alice Najabo (SLU/University of Rwanda): School Feeding Programs and food system transformation in rural Rwanda (SIDA, co-supervisor)

Completed PhD Main supervision

Happiness Mlula (2020-2025, SLU/Ardhi University Tanzania): Water governance in small towns: The role of local actors in domestic water service provision in Kabuku, Tanzania (SIDA, main supervisor)