Academic interests
My academic interests span political ecology, socionatures, critical development studies, feminist theory, and methodological work on mixing methods across the social and natural sciences. I feel passionately about theorizing new understandings of the society-environment nexus to account for power and politics within dynamic and unpredictable environmental change. I use in-depth, fieldwork-based studies combined with interdisciplinary theorizing to work with ontological and methodological pluralism.
I focus these passions around three main themes:
(1) Climate change adaptation and transformation in the context of development
(2) Public authority, state formation and collective action
(3) Emotion and subjectivity within environmental governance and commoning
I have worked in Nepal for over thirty years on questions of natural resource management, gender, caste and related environmental justice issues, and state transformation. I have also worked in Scotland on in-shore fisheries management. My most recent work is focused on climate change adaptation and political change and has expanded to include comparative work in Kenya and Nicaragua.
My scholarship has contributed to debates in feminist political ecology on theorising social justice, nature, commoning and environmental governance. I probe how intersectional social relations, including gender, race, caste, class and other axes of social difference (known collectively as intersectional subjectivities) are foundational to which management priorities are considered, who is expected to do what kinds of work to achieve environmental governance and sustainability goals. I am particularly interested in the possibilities for the transformation of inequalities and exclusions as collectives struggles over everyday governance practices.
Courses taught
- HGO4301 The social dimensions of climate change
My pedagogy is oriented around an experiential, interactive learning philosophy combined with a strong focus on analytical and conceptual learning. I take a student-centred, exploratory and mentoring approach that seeks to help students to recognise and achieve their own potential.
Background
I began my career on sailboats, mountaintops and swamps teaching environmental education to school children and adults in the USA. I interspersed outdoor education with work for the US Forest Service as a Ranger and Fisheries Technician.
In the mid 1990s, I trained as a geographer at the Department of Geography, University of Minnesota (2001) where I was a MacArthur Fellow in an interdisciplinary global studies training program, and held National Science Foundation Graduate Student awards, and a Fulbright award in Nepal for my research. After finishing my PhD, I held a faculty position as Environmental Geographer at the University of Edinburgh from 2002-2012. From 2012 I joined the University of Gothenburg, Sweden and helped found their Environmental Social Science research program. In 2015 moved to the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences as Chair of Rural Development in the Global South before coming to the University of Oslo in February of 2019.
Research Projects
The Swedish Research Council Sustainability and Resilience award, Governing Climate Resilient Futures: gender, justice and conflict resolution in resource management, is a partnership with Noemi Gonda (SLU), Siri Eriksen (Noragric, Norwegian University of Life Sciences), Hemant R. Ojha (Institute of Governance and Policy Analysis at University of Canberra and Institute for Studies and Development Worldwide Sydney, Australia), Dil Khatri (Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies, Nepal), Pierre Merlet (Universidad Centroamericana (UCA)-Nitlapa, Nicaragua), Ben Muok (Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology (JOOUST), Kenya). The work explores the possibilities for deliberative learning and transformative pathways towards social and climate justice.
The Swedish Research Council (VR) funded project, “Conflict, Violence and Environmental Change: Investigating resource governance and legitimacy in transitional societies (COVEC)” explores the politics of climate change adaptation in partnership with Siri Eriksen (Noragric, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway), Hemant Ojha (Institute of Governance and Policy Analysis at University of Canberra and Institute for Studies and Development Worldwide Sydney, Australia), the Southasia Institute for Advanced Studies (SIAS), and Ben Muok (Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology (JOOUST), Kenya).
Hemant Ojha and I finalized in 2015 our British Academy funded project, “Climate Change and Political Violence? Resource governance and post-conflict reconstruction in Nepal.” The Nepal work was part of a growing collaboration with Ajaya Dixit at the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition-Nepal (ISET-Nepal) and their International Development Research Institute (IDRC), Canada funded Think Tank work. Together we have engaged in policy debates around climate change adaptation and resilience, as well as providing writing workshops for emerging scholars in Nepal.
WEGO is a European Research Council Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network award on feminist political ecology. One of the two WEGO PhD students is engaged in research in Nepal on state formation and the other on in-shore fisheries organizing in Scotland.
Landscapes of Democracy, is my long term research project in Nepal tracking the political transition through the lens of resource governance. Resource governance is a context wherein struggles over authority and demands for resources and recognition of citizenship rights are particularly acute. This work points to how democracy and good environmental governance are dependent upon each other.
The Producing Seascapes project was closely linked to my previous research on in-shore fisheries management in Scotland and my interests in subjectivity, emotion and environment. Producing Seascapes probed how the Swedish coastal environment is understood and experienced differently for different people and links this plurality of views to governance challenges. The case study focused on the northwestern coast of Sweden in the area around Strömstad in collaboration with Ruth Brennan (Trinity Centre for Environmental Humanities, Trinity College, Dublin and Scottish Association for Marine Science), Stephen Hurrel (independent artist).
Awards
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2019-2022 Swedish Research Council (VR) Sustainability and Resilience grant, Governing Climate Resilient Futures: gender, justice and conflict resolution in resource management, Lead investigator with Dr. Noemi Gonda (SLU), Dr. Siri Eriksen (Noragric, Norwegian University of Life Sciences), Dr. Hemant R. Ojha (University of Canberra), Dr. Dil Khatri (Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies, Nepal), Mr. Pierre Merlet (Universidad Centroamericana (UCA)-Nitlapa, Nicaragua), and Dr. Ben Muok (Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology (JOOUST), Kenya).
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2019-2021 EU Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network award, Wellbeing, Ecology, Gender, and cOmmunity (WEGO), University of Oslo collaborator with lead Dr. Wendy Harcourt (ISS, The Hague, and 20 international collaborators).
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2018 Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Landscapes of Democracy: politics, subjectivity and ecologies in environmental governance, sabbatical grant.
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2016-2019 Swedish Research Council (VR) grant, Conflict, Violence and Environmental Change: Investigating resource governance and legitimacy in transitional societies (COVEC), Lead investigator with Dr. Siri Eriksen (Noragric, Norwegian University of Life Sciences), Dr. Hemant R. Ojha (University of New South Wales, Australia and Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies, Nepal) and Dr. Ben Muok (Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology (JOOUST), Kenya).
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2015-2020 Norwegian Research Council grant, Interactions of Climate Extremes, Air Pollution and Agro-ecosystems (CiXPAG)” Project no. 244551/E10, Lead investigator of social science work package, Noragric, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), overall project leader, Dr. Jana Sillman, CICERO, Norway.
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2014-2015 Marine Centre Grant, Producing Seascapes: Communities and marine spatial planning in Sweden and Scotland, lead investigator with Dr. Ruth Brennan (SAMS, Scotland), Steve Hurrel (artist), Linus Karlsson and Dr. Per Knutsson. University of Gothenburg.
Positions held
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Chair of Rural Development in the Global South, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Science, Uppsala, Sweden (2015-2019)
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Professor II (guest professor), International Environment and Development Studies (Noragric), Norwegian Life Sciences University (NMBU), Ås, Norway (2015-2017).
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Director of Environmental Social Science, School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden (2013-2015)
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Professor of Environmental Social Science, School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden (2012-2015)
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Senior Lecturer, Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK (2012)
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Lecturer, Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK (2002-2012)
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Research Fellow, Arkleton Centre for Rural Development, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK (2001-2002).
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Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of Minnesota-Duluth, Duluth, Minnesota, USA (2001).
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MacArthur Scholars Interdisciplinary Program on Global Change, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis USA (1994-2001)
PhD students
- Ankita Shrestha, WEGO funded PhD student, University of Oslo
- Eoin Farrelley, WEGO funded PhD student, University of Oslo
- Linus Karlsson, faculty funded PhD student, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)
List of publications
Books
2019 Nightingale, A.J. (ed.) with Karlsson, L., Böler, T., Campbell, B. (associate eds.) Environment and Sustainability in a Globalizing World, New York: Routledge.
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles
2019 Nightingale, A.J., Eriksen, S., Marcus Taylor, Mark Pelling, Lars Otto Naess, Lindsay Jones, Katrina Brown, Emily Boyd, Blane Harvey, Rachel Bezner Kerr, Tim Forsyth, Lyla Mehta, Andrew Newsham, Ian Scoones, Thomas Tanner, Stephen Whitfield, “Climate solutions beyond technical fixes: addressing the great derangement” Climate and Development (in press).
2019 Nightingale, A.J. “Commoning for inclusion? Political communities, commons, exclusion, property and socio-natural becomings”, International Journal of the Commonsspecial issue on Feminist Political Ecology and the Commons, 13:1 16-35.
2019 Neimark, B., Childs, J., Nightingale, A.J., Cavanaugh, C., Sullivan, S., Benjaminsen, T., Batterbury, S., Koot, S., Harcourt, W., “Speaking Power to ‘Post-Truth’: Critical Political Ecology and the New Authoritarianism”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers special issue on Authoritarianism, Populism, and the Environment: Comparative Experiences, Insights, and Perspectives, 1-11.
2019 Ensor, J.E., Wennström, P., Bhatterai, A., Nightingale, A.J., Eriksen, S., and Sillmann, J., “Asking the right questions in adaptation research and practice: Seeing beyond climate impacts in rural Nepal”, Environmental Science & Policy 94: 227-36.
2019 Ojha, H., Maraseni, T., Nightingale, A.J., Bhattarai, B., and Khatri, D, “Rescuing forests from the carbon trap”, Forest Policy and Economics 101: 15-18.
2018 Nightingale, A.J. “The socioenvironmental state: Political authority, subjects, and transformative socionatural change in an uncertain world”, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. 1(4), 688-711.
2018 Nightingale A.J. “Nepal's Towering Climate Adaptation Challenges”, Current History: A Journal of Contemporary Affairs 117: 135-141.
2018 Nightingale, A.J. (2018) “Geography’s contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals: Ambivalence and performance”, Commentary. Dialogues in Human Geography 8: 196-200.
2018 Widengård, Marie, Nightingale, A.J., Peter Roberntz, Tobias Edman, and Allan Carlson. “Seeing Like a Standard: EU, Sustainable Biofuels, and Land Use Change in Africa”, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 17 (1), 49-87.
2018 Nightingale, A.J., Bhatterai, A., Ojha, H.R., Sigdel, T. and Rankin, K. “Fragmented public authority and state un/making in the ‘new’ Republic of Nepal”, article for a special issue on the State in South Asia in Modern Asian Studies. 52(2), 849-882.
2018 Ahlborg, H. and Nightingale, A.J. “Theorizing power in political ecology: the whereof power in resource governance projects”, part of a special issue on power in political ecology, Journal of Political Ecology,25(1) 1-25.
2018 Rankin, K. N., Nightingale, A.J., Hamal, P., & Sigdel, T. S. “Roads of change: political transition and state formation in Nepal’s agrarian districts” The Journal of Peasant Studies, 45:2, 280-299. doi:10.1080/03066150.2016.1216985
2018 Karlsson L., Naess L.O., Nightingale A.J., Thompson J. “‘Triple wins’ or ‘triple faults’? Analysing the equity implications of policy discourses on climate-smart agriculture (CSA)”, for a special forum section on The Global Political Economy of Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Systems, Journal of Peasant Studies. 45(1), 150-174.
2017 Nightingale, A.J. “Power and Politics in Climate Change Adaptation Efforts: struggles over authority and recognition in the context of political instability,” Geoforum. 84, 11-20.
2017 Nagoda, S. and Nightingale, A.J. “Participation and Power in Climate Change Adaptation Policies: Vulnerability in Food Security Programs in Nepal,” World Development. 100, 85-93.
2016 Byrne, S., Nightingale A.J., Korf, B. “Making Territory: War, Post-war and the Entangled Scales of Contested Forest Governance in Mid-Western Nepal” Development and Change, 47(6): 1269–1293.
2016 Nightingale, A.J. “Adaptive Scholarship and Situated Knowledges? Hybrid Methodologies and Plural Epistemologies in Climate Change Adaptation Research” Area, 48:1, 41-47.
2016 Ojha, H.R., Ghimire, S., Pain, A., Nightingale, A.J., Khatri, D.B., Dhungana, H. “Policy without politics: technocratic control of climate change adaptation policy making in Nepal” Climate Policy, 16:4 415-433
2015 Eriksen, S.H., Nightingale A.J., Eakin, H. “Reframing adaptation: The political nature of climate change adaptation”, Global Environmental Change, 35, 523-533(co-first authorwith Eriksen).
2015 Eriksen, S.H., Nightingale A.J, Eakin H. Special Issue Editors, “The Politics of Climate Change Adaptation”, Global Environmental Change, 35.
2015 Staddon, S. C., Nightingale, A.J. & Shrestha, S. K. 2015. “Exploring participation in ecological monitoring in Nepal's community forests”, Environmental Conservation, 42:3, 268-267
2014 Nightingale, A. J. and Rankin, K. “Political Transformations: collaborative feminist scholarship in Nepal” for the special issue on the “Cultural Politics of Gendered Identity, Place and Positionality” Himalaya, 34:1 105-117.
2014 Nightingale, A. J. and Sharma, J. R. “Community Forestry User-Groups and Conflict Resilience: Experiences of a Donor Supported Community Forestry Programme in Nepal” Disasters, 38:3 517-539.
2014 Staddon, S., Nightingale, A. J. and Shrestha, S. “The social nature of participatory environmental monitoring” Society and Nature Resources, 27:9 899-914.
2013 Nightingale, A.J. and Ojha, H. R. “Rethinking Power and Authority: Symbolic Violence and Subjectivity in Nepal’s Terai Forests” Development and Change, 44:1 29-51.
2013 Fisher, J. A., Patenaude, G., Meir, P., Nightingale, A.J., Rounsevell, M. D. A., Williams, M. & Woodhouse, I. H. “Strengthening conceptual foundations: Analysing frameworks for ecosystem services and poverty alleviation research” Global Environmental Change, 23:5 1098-1111.
2013 Nightingale, A.J. “Fishing for Nature: the politics of subjectivity and emotion in Scottish in-shore fisheries management” Environment and Planning A, 45:10 2363-2378.
2012 Ahlborg, H. and Nightingale, A.J. “Mismatch between scales of knowledge in Nepalese forestry: epistemology, power and policy implications” Ecology and Society17:4 16.
2012 Cote, M. and Nightingale, A.J. “Resilience thinking meets social theory: situating social change in SES research” Progress in Human Geography, 36:4 475-789.
2011 Nightingale, A.J. “Beyond Design Principles: subjectivity, emotion and the (ir)rational commons”, Society and Natural Resources24:2, 119-132.
2011 Nightingale, A.J. “Bounding difference: Intersectionality and the material production of gender, caste, class and environment in Nepal” Geoforumspecial issue on gender and environment 42:2, 153-162.
2011 Hawkins, Roberta and Ojeda, Diana (Eds) with Kiran Asher, Brigitte Baptiste, Leila Harris, Sharlene Mollett, Andrea Nightingale, Dianne Rocheleau, Joni Seager, Farhana Sultana (Contributors (alphabetical order)), “Gender and environment: critical tradition and new challenges”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space29:2, 237-253.
2009 Nightingale, A.J. “Nepal’s Green Forests; a ‘thick’ aesthetics of contested landscapes”, Ethics, Place and Environment12:3, 313-331.
2009 Nightingale, A.J. “Warming up the Climate Change Debate: a challenge to policy based on adaptation”, the Journal of Forestry and Livelihoods8:1.
2006 Nightingale, A.J. “The Nature of Gender: work, gender and environment”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space24:2, 165-185.
2005 Nightingale, A.J. “‘The Experts Taught us All We Know’ Professionalisation and Knowledge in Nepalese Community Forestry” Antipode37:3, 581-604.
2005 Lee, J., Árnason, A., Nightingale, A. and Shucksmith, M. “Networking: social capital and identities in European rural development”, Sociologica Ruralis45:4. 269-283. (conducted all fieldwork, analyzed data and contributed 30% to the writing of the paper).
2003 Nightingale, A. J. “Nature-Society and Development: Social, Cultural and Ecological Change in Nepal”, Geoforum, 34:4, 525-540, 525-540.
2003 Nightingale, A.J. “A Feminist in the Forest: Situated Knowledges and Mixing Methods in Natural Resource Management”, ACME: an International E-Journal for Critical Geographers, 2:1, 77-90.
2002 Nightingale, A.J. “Participating or Just Sitting In? The Dynamics of Gender and Caste in Community Forestry” Journal of Forestry and Livelihoods, 2:1, 17-24.
Book Chapters
2019 Ojha Hemant R., Ghate Rucha, Dorji Lam, Shrestha, Ankita, Paudel, Dinesh, Nightingale, Andrea, Shrestha, Krishna, Watto, Muhammad Arif, Kotru, Rajan, Governance: Key for Environmental Sustainability in the Hindu Kush Himalaya. In: Wester P, Mishra A, Mukherji A, et al. (eds) The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment: Mountains, Climate Change, Sustainability and People.Cham: Springer International Publishing, 545-578.
2019 Ngwenya, P. and Nightingale, A.J. “Rethinking the ‘ethics’ of community economies” in Feminist Political Ecology and the Economics of Care, Bauhardt, C. and Harcourt, W. (eds.), 131-161.
2018 Coordinating Lead Authors: Balachandran, G. & Mallard, G., Lead Authors: Arewa, O., Baccaro, L., Büthe, T., Nightingale, A.J., Pénet, P., Pestre, D., Roberts, A., “Governing Capital, Labor and Nature in a Changing World”, International Panel for Social Progress,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Vol. 2, Ch. 12, 491-522.
2017 Nightingale, A.J. “Environment and Gender” in the International Encyclopedia of Geography, Douglas Richardson, Noel Castree, Michael F. Goodchild, Audrey Kobayashi, Weidong Liu, and Richard A. Marston (eds.), New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons Ltd. 1-13.
2017 Nightingale, A.J. “A Feminist in the Forest: Situated Knowledges and Mixing Methods in Natural Resource Management” in the Earthscan Reader on Forests: Gender and Forests, Carol J. Pierce Colfer, Marlène Elias, Bimbika Sijapati Basnett, Susan Hummel (eds.), New York: Routledge. 109-122.
2015 Nightingale, A.J. “Commons and Alternative Rationalities: Subjectivity, Emotion and the (Non)rational Commons”. in Bollier, D. and Helfrich, S (eds). Patterns of Commoning. The Commons Strategies Group: Amherst, Massachusetts; Jena, Germany; Chiang Mai, Thailand. 298-308.
2015 Nightingale, A.J. “Challenging the Romance with Resilience,” in Practicing Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving Beyond the ‘Green Economy’, Harcourt, W. and Nelson, I. (eds.), Zed Books, 182-210.
2015 Nightingale, A.J. “A Socionature Approach to Adaptation: Political transition, intersectionality, and climate change programmes in Nepal” in Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices,Tor Håkon Inderberg, Siri Eriksen, Karen O’Brien and Linda Sygna, eds., London: Routledge. 219-234.
2014 Nightingale, A.J. “Society-Nature” in Sage Handbook of Human Geography, Roger Lee, Noel Castree, Rob Kitchin, Victoria Lawson, Anssi Paasi, Chris Philo, Sarah Radcliffe, Susan M Roberts and Charles W J Withers (eds). London: Sage. 120-147.
2014 Nightingale, A.J. “Questioning Commoning” in the Barron, Drake and Morrow (eds) Book Symposium on Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communitiesby J.K. Gibson-Graham, Jenny Cameron and Stephen Healy, Journal of Social and Cultural Geography, 15:8, 980-981.
2011 Nightingale A.J. “The Embodiment of Nature: Fishing, Emotion and the Politics of Environmental Values”, in Embodied Values and Environment, E. Brady and P. Phemister eds., Springer, 135-147. (peer-reviewed)
2010 Nightingale, A. J. and Pettigrew, J. “Everyday Spaces of Protest in Kathmandu,” in Hope and Fear: Living Through the People’s War in Nepal, P. Manandhar and D. Seddon (eds.) in New Delhi: Adroit Publishers, 214-220.
2010 Nightingale, A.J. “Ecofeminism” in Encyclopedia of Geography, B. Warf ed., Sage, 817-820.
2010 Nightingale, A.J. “Expedition Ethics” in Understanding Educational Expeditions, Simon Beames (ed.). Sense Publishing, 103-112.
2010 Nightingale, A.J. “A Forest Community or Community Forestry? Beliefs, meanings and nature in north-western Nepal,” in Under the Roof of the World: Critical Himalayan Environments,A. Guneratne (ed.), London:Routledge 196-240.
2009 Nightingale, A.J. “Methods: Triangulation” in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, R. Kitchen and N. Thrift. eds.,. Oxford: Elsevier, July, vol. 11 489-492.
2009 Nightingale, A.J. “Methods: Oral History, Ecological” in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography,R. Kitchen and N. Thrift. eds., Oxford: Elsevier, July, vol. 8, 34-36.