Ida Andersson

About Ida Andersson

Ida has a PhD in Geography with emphasis on Human geography from the Department of Human Geography at Stockholm University. Since July 2018 Ida is working as Senior lecturer in Human Geography at the School for Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (HumUS), and is since 2021 appointed Associate professor in Human Geography at Örebro University.
In her research she is focusing on economic and urban geography. She is currently working on research on policy development, the green economy and regional development. Her research is mainly focused on Sweden with a Nordic and European (EU) outlook.

Current research

Ida is the director for the multidisciplinary research school ”Water challenges in sustainable planning and the built environment – WATCH” between 2023 – 2027. Seven Phd students are enrolled in WATCH, whereof five at Örebro University and two at Karlstad University. The research school, funded via the research council Formas and their call ”Forskarskolor för hållbart samhällsbyggande”, is developed in collaboration with six partner organizations: Karlstad municipality, Värmland county board, Örebro county board, MSB – The Swedish civil contingency agency, Swedish water and Örebro municipality. The research school aims to contribute with transformative capacity and knowledge transfer between research and practice.

Between 2021-2025 Ida is PI in the project "Effects of re-scaling for sustainable transformation. 10 years with regional transport authorities as strategic spatialplanners". The other project members are Brita Hermelin from Linköping University, Linnéa Eriksson and Robin Nuruzzaman from Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI). The project is funded through the research council Formas. One of the outreach activities in the project is the podcast "Kollektivtrafikpodden" (i.e. "the public transport podcast"), which is produced a couple of times per year. 

Ida is also working in a smaller project investigating the labor market effects of investment in the industrial wood building industry. This project is funded by The Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry.   

In addition, Ida participates in the Viable Cities project headed by Örebro municipality between 2021-2024. 

Previous research

During 2020, Ida was the PI in a project called "Public transport for transformation? Planning sustainable transports systems through regional collaboration"  funded by Formas. The project was carried out together with Professor Brita Hermelin from Linköping University and focused on the transformation of public transport in Sweden since 2012, when 21 regional transport authorities took over responsibility for public transport. The project placed emphasis on collaboration, knowledge exchange and the urban-rural relationships related to public transport. 

During 2016-2019 Ida was working in a project called "Sustainable housing 2.0? The role of policy networks and eco innovations in the wood based housing sector in Sweden" funded by Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius foundation. This project aimed to investigate how policy networks and eco innovations have impacted sustainable housing policies and the development of the wood based housing sector. In this project, theory on innovation and green economy were brought into dialogue with literature on urban policy mobilities in order to research and understand the interactive processes between policy networks and eco innovation, and how these in turn have affected sustainable housing policies. Ida's approach to this research topic had a particular emphasis on the corporate sphere (the wood working industry) and the policy-making sphere on various geographical scales (national, regional, local). The project mainly covered a Swedish perspective, with some outlooks towards European housing policies in relation to sustainable urban development.

Ida is a member of the "Green Economices Network" gathering researchers in Sweden, Norway, Finland, UK, Germany and Luxemburg. She collaborates regularly with different researchers in the network regarding publications, project and various research activities. On example is the workshop "The green economy and regional development" that took place in in Örebro in November 2019.  

Together with Dr. Rhiannon Pugh (Lunds University) and Dr. Taylor Brygdes (Stockholm University) Ida managed "The Gender and Regional Studies network" with support from the Regional Studies Association (2019-2022). The aim of the network was to gather female scholars working in economic geography in matters relating to research, career development and networking. 

In 2018 Ida was the editor for the annual edition of the Ymer book series by SSAG, titled "Globala flöden och lokala praktiker - policymobilitet i tid och rum" (in English: Global flows and local practices - policy mobilities in time and space), gathering 15 authors from around Scandinavia and the UK. The book was launched April 24th 2018 and is available as an e-book with open access.

Teaching

Ida has vast experience from teaching on undergraduate, advanced and PhD level in both Swedish and English. She teaches primarily on issues related to economic geography, regional development, planning, philosophy of science, methods, and methodology, including supervision on both bachelor and master level. Ida participates on a regular basis in the teacher's exchange through the Erasmus program where she has taught Economic Geography and Planning at the University of Bergen in Norway. 

Current supervision of PhD students: 

Felix Rietschel
Julia Schneider

Previous supervision of PhD students (graduated): 

Christopher Olsson

Ida's background

Ida originates from Skellefteå, Västerbotten and in May 2015 she finished her PhD project titled "Geographies of place branding: Researching through small and medium sized cities" at the Department of Human Geography at Stockholm University. More on this project can be found in Diva. Here is a video where Ida talks about this research (in Swedish).

Ida has a masters degree in Urban Studies and a bachelors degree in Human Geography from Uppsala University and before she started at the PhD program Stockholm University she was working in the financial sector in Stockholm as a project manager and product specialist. Ida also held the position av Chief Operating Officer at Stockholm University Student Union between 2015-2016. Ida is a competitive rower and have won the World Masters Rowing Championship and the Swedish Championship. Ida competes for Hammarby If Roddförening in Stockholm.