Per Olsson

Per Olsson leads the research stream on Resilience Science for Transformations. His current research focuses on agency and system entrepreneurship, social-ecological innovations, transformations to sustainability, and how to reverse current trends of crossing critical thresholds and tipping points in the Earth system. He has co-authored several book chapters, including one for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and articles in scientific journals, including Science, PNAS, TREE, Ambio, Global Environmental Change, Environmental Management, and the Annual Review of the Environment and Resources. He is an active member of the Resilience Alliance, and a subject editor for the journal Ecology and Society. Per maintains an extensive international scientific network, including researchers at the STEPS Centre (UK), Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (Canada), and DRIFT Institute (The Netherlands). Related to this, he also is the hub leader for the ISSC funded Transformation Knowledge Network, and serves on the Advisory Committee to the Future Earth Knowledge Action Network on Transformations to Sustainability.

Recently, Olsson has developed the concept of T-labs (Transformation labs), a new methodology for generating innovative approaches for re-wiring social-ecological systems.

Per is a transdisciplinary researcher and has worked in the interface of natural and social sciences and humanities. He has been instrumental in developing the research fields of local ecological knowledge, adaptive co-management, and adaptive governance. This work has involved theoretical development based on field research using both qualitative and quantitative methods for gathering and analyzing data. His work has explored the interactions between actors, institutions and organizations and focused on the emergence of integrated approaches to the management and governance of natural resources. His work has crossed local to global scales, including local water governance to multi-lateral institutional contexts, in the north and south, including Solomon Islands and Australia, and in a wide range of systems, such as marine, water, food, urban, and agriculture. Per has served as the course leader for many Masters and PhD courses. Olsson has supervised two postdoctoral researchers, five PhD Students, and more than 20 Masters students.

Per is co-leading the Rockefeller Foundation Global Fellowship Program on Social Innovation, which is designed to strengthen the capacity of leaders and change makers in identifying targeted, innovative ways of tackling complex, linked social and environmental problems at their roots. He was the program director for the Stockholm Resilience Centre’s LEAD program on Exponential Technologies, Resilience Thinking and Entrepreneurship. The LEAD program was aimed at future leaders and change makers, and included introducing novel concepts and how they relate to sustainability and human wellbeing.

Per Olsson has invested heavily in facilitating interactions among scientists, policy makers, artists, businesses, and the public through a variety of initiatives. For example, Per is the co-founder of Coral Guardians, which serves as an innovation space for combining music, policy, and science. He was also the co-founder of SHIFT, an accelerator for start-ups and social-ecological entrepreneurship. He served as the scientific advisor to MacGillivray Freeman Films, Incorporated IMAX film Coral Reef Adventure, and was also the national coordinator for the UNESCO Man and Biosphere Program in Sweden.

Per was a member of the organizing committee for the first Resilience conference in 2008, now a triennial event. He was also instrumental in initiating the Transformations conferences, which is now a biennial event that provides a platform for researchers, practitioners, and others to explore transformations to sustainability. This work involves being a member of the organizing and scientific committee for the Transformation 2013 conference in Oslo, Norway, convener and co-chair of the Transformations 2015 conference in Stockholm, Sweden, and a member of the organizing and scientific committee for the Transformation 2017 in Dundee, Scotland.