Stockholm University, Stockholm Resilience Centre (SU-SRC) is an international research centre which advances sustainability science for biosphere stewardship. The centre is a joint initiative between Stockholm University and The Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The centre is funded by the Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research, Mistra. The centre currently employs ca. 120 researchers and staff. Its goal is to advance interdisciplinary research for governance of social-ecological systems (SES) with a special emphasis on resilience - the ability to deal with change and continue to develop. Researchers at SU-SRC apply a multitude of approaches from in-depth qualitative case study analysis to quantitative modelling and often use mixed method approaches. Relevant work lies in the areas of analysing social-ecological feedbacks that determine change in social-ecological systems, particularly regime shifts and transformation. It include for instance the analysis of a successful transformation to ecosystem-based management in a wetland area in Sweden, principles for enhancing the resilience of ecosystem services  and modelling SES as complex adaptive systems. The proposal will benefit from a rapidly growing group of quantitative modellers that analyse SES in aquatic, agricultural and urban environments. Researchers at SU-SRC have extensive experience in interdisciplinary collaboration, especially between the natural, social and economic fields, as well as stakeholder engagement at various levels. SU-SRC has established a SES modelling and visualisation lab which provides infrastructure and programming expertise for the development of SES models.

The main tasks of SU-SRC is developing social-ecological models to assess the resilience of catchments to disturbances and ongoing change, and co-developing conceptual models and model-supported scenario analysis for resilience assessment and development of management options with stakeholders in participatory processes in the Swedish lakes case study. Additionally SU-SRC contributes to integrating resilience thinking into the WP3, Assessment Framework, and for model scenario analysis in WP7, Forecasting Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Provision. SU-SRC also elicits stakeholder views and preferences about biodiversity and ecosystem services into modelling targets and scenarios for WP7.  Finally, insights from social-ecological systems analysis and resilience assessment feed into the development of policies and ecosystem-based management in WP8, Ecosystem-based Management towards Policy Objectives.

Dr. Maja Schlüter

Dr. Maja Schlüter is a researcher at Stockholm Resilience Centre studying the dynamics of social-ecological systems (SESs) in the face of environmental or social change. She focuses particularly on how feedbacks between human action and ecological dynamics determine their co-evolution and sustainability. Her research interests include cooperation in the commons under changing environmental conditions, social-ecological regime shifts and traps; and opportunities for transformation. She combines simulation modelling with empirical studies of SESs, such as irrigation in Bali; water management in the Amudarya river basin; and marine governance in the Baltic Sea. The aim is to identify patterns of social-ecological interactions that are common across cases and to understand their role for governance and resilience. Maja has a background in ecology and system science and has worked at the Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig-Halle; Princeton University and the Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin. She heads the ERC funded group SES-LINK.

Dr. Romina Martin

Dr. Romina Martin is a PostDoc at Stockholms Resilience Centre and works on regime shifts in lakes and ecosystem service use with support of social-ecological model analyses. From 2013 to 2015, her work was funded by the Biodiversa project LimnoTip in collaboration with the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) in Berlin, Germany. Romina is interested in diverse modelling tools to investigate the behaviour of ecosystems that effect human well-being, using bioeconomic and agent-based modelling to simulate decision-making in the human-environmental interface. Beyond the purpose of learning about complex mechanisms in the social-ecological systems, Romina is interested in disentangling and translating these mechanisms for transdisciplinary activities or environmental education purposes (e.g. by participatory approaches or development of serious games). Romina's background is in Computer Science and Biology, where she has completed both studies with a Diploma degree. Romina holds a PhD in Biology on the topic of pastoral livelihood security and rangeland management in drylands using ecological-economic modelling approaches, which was carried out at the University of Cologne and the Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig in the Department of Ecological Modelling.