Our soapbox science event 2023 will take place in Stockholm, Sweden. Built on 14 islands around one of Europe’s largest and best-preserved mediaeval city centres, the city is stunningly located by the Baltic Sea. It has about 1 mill inhabitants and it provides a large variety of cultural and out-door activities. Stockholm was the first city to receive the award European Green Capital by the EU Commission in 2010. Stockholm is an academic hub for Sweden with 18 universities and higher education institutions spanning a wide range of cultural, technological, scientific, medical, economic and sustainability disciplines.
Stockholm 2023 Soapbox Science local organizing team:
Our soapbox science event in Stockholm in 2023 is organized by five female scientists that do research at the Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University. We are an engaged group of scientists that enjoys our research activities and we want to tell the public more about our findings.
Ronja Kraus, PhD student, Dept of Physical Geography, Stockholm University,
I am interested in wildlife conservation and management, which is particularly important where there are conflicts between humans and wildlife. Most of my previous field experience I gained in Namibia where I examined fences as an applied measure to mitigate conflicts with elephants. My PhD is about identifying general geospatial and temporal patterns in human-carnivore conflicts that occur in all my project regions: Sweden, Italy and Tanzania. As a geographer and ecologist, I am looking at the movements of wolves and spotted hyenas in relation to their environment. At the same time, I am passionate in working with local stakeholders, hence, I also visit and interview hunters and livestock breeders who are averse to carnivores. With this interdisciplinary approach and thoughtful knowledge transfer, I aim to create a comprehensive understanding that supports the conservation of large carnivores.
Anna Scaini, Researcher at Dept of Physical Geography, Stockholm University.
I work on sustainability of water resources across different sectors and assessing local to regional problems. I am a hydrologist by training and I carry out my research on rivers around the world, across multiple water uses and values. The main thread of my research is the involvement of local communities to foster their role in adapting to climate change. For this reason, outreach and citizen science are the foundation of my work, and I collaborate actively with WWF Germany and NGOs such as CEVI and the River Collective. Photo: Field work in the rice fields of An Giang, Vietnam (Photo: John Livsey)
Heather Wood, PhD student, Landscape Environment and Geomatics, Dept of Physical Geography, Stockholm University.
In my research I study the effects of climate and land-use change on Swedish bat populations. I use a multi-method approach combining diverse techniques to assess the impacts on bats including acoustics, genetics and morphological assessment in combination with GIS and LIDAR data. I am a passionate communicator of science and as part of my PhD I launched a citizen project (www.batmapper.org) to collect information on bat colonies across Sweden. This successful project enabled me to engage with the public and the media whilst collecting valuable data for my research. Aside from my academic work, I am actively involved with two NGOs: BatLife Sweden and BatLife Europe. Through these organizations I’m involved with public outreach and policy development.
Marianne Stoessel, PhD student, Landscape Environment and Geomatics, Dept of Physical Geography, Stockholm University.
I am a passionate ecologist and I like to study nature through different perspectives, if possible different disciplines. Originally, I studied behavioural ecology and ecophysiology in Strasbourg (2012). I also developed other skills in animal monitoring such as camera trapping surveys, bird ringing and animal tracking through different projects, jobs and traineeships. Then I did the Master programme in landscape ecology at Stockholm University (2016), where I studied community ecology in the Swedish mountain tundra (together with the Swedish Arctic fox research group). I am now currently doing a PhD in Physical Geography, studying the interacting effects of land-use and global warming on reindeer grazing. For this project, a part of my research has been in collaboration with Swedish reindeer herding districts (Sameby) to deploy GPS-collars combined with activity loggers on reindeer. These loggers will help me monitor reindeer behaviour at a fine scale, and study how human presence in the mountains, in particular outdoor tourism, is affecting reindeer grazing activities in summer.
Felicity Pike, PhD student, Dept of Physical Geography, Stockholm University.
My interests are a combination of marine biology & social sciences, focusing on ocean sustainability that benefits both people and seas. Within my PhD, I work with gender and how inequalities lead to differences in how people benefit or miss out from local conservation and coastal management. This includes, for example, differences in food security and access to sustainable livelihoods. Alongside my PhD, I’m also active within a project called the Indo-Pacific Seagrass network where we look at how seagrass meadows contribute to biodiversity, fisheries and people’s well-being across the tropical region. I use a range of research methods from underwater surveys, to surveys at fish markets to interviews with local stakeholders. This gives insight into how people and oceans are linked which can help guide more effective conservation and management.
Anna Treydte, Assoc Prof in Nature and Environmental Management, Dept of Physical Geography, Stockholm University.
My research activities cover a wide variety of socio-ecological aspects. In my group, we address livestock management and rangeland restoration in arid and semi-arid systems. Further, our research aims at promoting human-wildlife coexistence by understanding wild and domestic animal movement patterns, and predicting conflict hotspots in space and time. I also try to understand how invasive and encroaching plant species affect ecosystem functions and services. My research is often applied and includes participatory studies with the local communities to make biodiversity protection, natural resources use and functioning of our ecosystems more sustainable in the long run.