Wilhelm Wanecek

Doktorand | PhD Student
Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University
wilhelm.wanecek@su.se

What is your research about?

We urgently need to reorient our food systems to provision affordable and healthy food for all, without driving social injustice or ecological degradation. In my research, I seek to contribute to understandings of new ways of organising the agrifood system, with a focus on economic and organisational structures, and the power relations that arise from these configurations. Previous related research, especially on power consolidation, has focused mainly on the global or American context, why I hope to contribute to the scholarship on opportunities and resistance in the case of the Swedish agrifood system.

What background do you have?

I have somewhat of a mixed background. I worked for several years as a software developer before in 2018 pursuing a degree in Computer Science and Engineering at Lund University. During my undergraduate studies, I successively developed an interest for the sociocultural and political dimensions of climate change, and the structural barriers to environmental justice. That is why I in 2022 changed my educational trajectory, instead pursuing a degree in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science from Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies, where I learned to appreciate critical and interdisciplinary perspectives. Today, I have a BSc in Technology and a MSc in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science.

Why do you think this is important?

Research has an important role to play in interrogating the political dimensions of socio-ecological transformative change. Clearly, various actors have vested interests both in upholding current systems and shaping future systems. It is essential to understand whose voice and interest is represented in such processes for a just transformation. I’m excited to collaborate with colleagues working on, for example, more technical facets of food systems transformations to together unpack both ‘what’ a transformation may look like as well as ‘for whom’ and ‘by whom’ change is envisioned.