About
We have expertise in research on alternative organising, political economy, and plastic policy and governance.
“Plastics in a circular society: Alternative organising beyond resource efficiency” brings together an international interdisciplinary team of researchers from Lund University, Copenhagen Business School, and Geneva Graduate Institute. It is funded by Formas (the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development), grant number 2021-02440.
"Reduce, reuse, redesign: Lund University as a testbed for tackling the plastic crisis" was a collaborative effort between Lund University and Plastikfreie Stadt (Plastic-Free City), to implement research-informed change in practice. It was supported by Lund University Sustainability Fund and the above-mentioned Formas project..
If you are interested to do an internship or write your master’s thesis with us, you are welcome to get in touch.
Acknowledgements
There are many people who have contributed to this research. We are extremely grateful to:
- Multiple initiatives who have shared their time and knowledge with us in interviews
- Organisations that have generously hosted us on site, opening the doors of their organisations and showing the inspiring practices they are involved in
- People at Lund University for sharing their thoughts, insights and information concerning the potentialities for reducing plastic use on campus
- Beatriz Adriana Venegas Sahagún (Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico) and her students for helping us to identify and ultimately map additional initiatives in the context of Latin America.
The team
Ekaterina Chertkovskaya
Ekaterina Chertkovskaya (principal investigator, Lund University) explores visions, practices and strategies for socio-ecological transformation through the concept of degrowth. The plastic crisis is currently her key empirical focus. She has written on artistic interventions into the plastic crisis, zero-waste stores, and is keen on exploring how locally embedded whilst globally connected alternatives can spread.
Jacob Hasselbalch
Jacob Hasselbalch (Copenhagen Business School) works on the political economy of sustainability transformations. He is interested in cultural, political, and economic arrangements that make transformations difficult, and in how different actors navigate and contest those arrangements, also in relation to plastics governance and alternatives to the plastic crisis.
Johannes Stripple
Johannes Stripple (Lund University) has worked on environmental futures: how they are envisioned and how they could be imagined differently. He examines the politics of the environment and its governance through a range of sites, from the UN, the petroplastics complex to the urban, the arts and the everyday.
More about Johannes at Department of Political Science at Lund University's website
Vera Visser
Vera Visser (Lund University) was involved in both "Reduce, Reuse, Redesign" and "Plastics in a circular society" projects (2024–2025)), and earlier did an internship with us (Fall 2023), as part of the Human Ecology master’s programme. She is interested in the relations people have with the materiality of plastics, having previously conducted ethnographic research on this through visual methods. She has recently defended her master’s thesis on food-rescue initiatives, degrowth and alternative organising.
Johanna Gäbken
Johanna Gäbken (Plastikfreie Stadt) is working with businesses, schools and municipalities to reduce their plastic consumption. She is fascinated by how focusing on plastics can spur a larger sustainability transformation and strives for improving the conditions for organisations working towards the common good. Johanna brought her expertise on the plastic inventory tool to "Reduce, Reuse, Redesign" project and had earlier been involved in "Plastics in a circular society".
Giuliana Quaresima
Giuliana Quaresima (Lund University) was involved in "Plastics in a circular society" project. She completed a master’s in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science at Lund University (2025). She has had prior experience with waste management initiatives in Mexico, which has led to an interest in the policy and governance aspects of waste management. Additionally, she is also drawn to degrowth and how it is evolving in Latin America.
Carolyn Deere Birkbeck
Carolyn Deere Birkbeck (Geneva Graduate Institute) will join "Plastics in a circular society" project during the third phase, where we will be exploring the governance mechanisms that can enable alternatives to the plastic crisis to flourish.
Bhavesh Gulati
Bhavesh Gulati visited us in his capacity as a doctoral student at the University of Pisa from January to July 2025. He was involved in "Reduce, Reuse, Redesign" project. His doctoral work explores the complex relationship between waste generation – particularly that resulting from low product durability and planned or perceived obsolescence – and interlinkage to reducing working time.
Divya Luciani
Divya Luciani (Lund University) was involved in "Plastics in a circular society" project (Fall 2024), and did an internship with us earlier (Fall 2023), as part of the Human Ecology master’s programme. She has previous experience in environmental education and is interested in the sociocultural narratives surrounding plastics. Divya completed a master’s thesis on strategies within the Break Free From Plastic movement.
Leon Auty
Leon Auty contributed to the mapping phase of the "Plastics in a circular society" project during the autumn semester 2023 as part of his internship for the Human Ecology master’s programme at Lund University. He wrote his master’s thesis on the political economy of reuse. Leon is interested in transformational models of circular societies, having previously engaged with climate justice and degrowth.