Ståle HolgersenSenior Lecturer, Docent

About me

I am a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Stockholm University. After submitting my Master's thesis at the University of Bergen, Norway, in 2007, I worked for three years as a city planner in the municipality of Bergen. I defended my PhD in Human Geography at Lund University in 2014, worked as a post-doc, teacher, and researcher in Uppsala between 2015 and 2022, and as a Senior Lecturer at Örebro University between 2022 and 2024. I became a Docent at Uppsala University in 2020.

My current research interests include urban planning and development, class, crises and climate, urban and social geography, and sustainable development and climate denialism. My two latest monographs—Staden och kapitalet (Daidalos, 2017) and Against the Crisis (Verso Books, 2024; originally Krisernas tid (Daidalos, 2022))—have focused on economic and ecological crises; the former examining the city of Malmö, the latter analyzing crises more generally. My latest co-authored book—Kris i bostadsfrågan (Daidalos, 2023), authored by Kollektivet Fundament—analyzed the history and possible futures of the Swedish housing system. In 2024, I co-edited Political Ecologies of the Far Right: Fanning the Flames (Manchester University Press) with Irma Kinga Allen, Kristoffer Ekberg, Ståle Holgersen, and Andreas Malm.

I am currently working on three research projects. One concerns Swedish housing: "The Housing Question in Times of Crisis: Searching for Socially Sustainable Solutions" (Formas 2018-01613), which ends in January 2025. As Sweden is confronting one of its worst housing crises in modern times, this project will investigate how the housing system has changed through two previous crises—notably, i) the interwar period and ii) the banking crisis of the early 1990s.

The two other projects are concerned with climate denialism, far-right movements, and anti-genderism. One is called "White Skin, Black Fuel: Investigating the (Anti-)Climate Politics of European Right-Wing Populism" (Formas 2018-01702), and the other, "An Ethnographic Exploration of Anti-Genderism: Ideas, Identities, and Political Practices in the Nordic Region" (VR 2020-04164). The right-wing populist parties that are currently exercising increasing influence in Europe have negative attitudes toward immigration as their main selling point, and they tend to have anti-genderist/anti-feminist agendas. However, they also tend to be critical of the scientific consensus on climate change. These projects will investigate how this relates, and in both projects, I will conduct a case study on Norway.