Rate My Professor Erik Andersson

Erik Andersson is Professor and Head of the Department of Environmental Sciences in the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Helsinki. He earned his PhD in Natural Resources Management from Stockholm University in 2007, with a dissertation entitled "Managing the urban green." An interdisciplinarian, Andersson's research spans natural resources management, sustainable use and governance of landscapes, support for biodiversity and anthropogenic services, systems and landscape ecology, geography, landscape governance, urban studies, conservation planning, and participatory transdisciplinary research. He leads the Complex Landscapes research group at the Ecosystems and Environment Research Programme, focusing on urban and regional greening through planning, organizational, and ecosystem-based perspectives. Andersson is a member of the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS) and the Helsinki Institute of Urban and Regional Studies (Urbaria). He supervises doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers, and has extensive teaching experience across bachelor's, master's, and doctoral levels.

In his career, Andersson serves as Extraordinary Professor in the Research Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management at North-West University, South Africa (2022–2024), and as Principal Researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University (2020–present). His contributions have been recognized with the BiodivERsA Prize for Excellence and Impact (2021), the Ecological Society of America's Sustainability Science Award (2023), and the Universitatis Lodziensis Amico medal (2022). Notable publications include "Transforming the nature of cities — stewardship and more-than-human agency" (2026, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability), "Urban sustainability science: from adaptation to regeneration on the road to 2050" (2026, npj Urban Sustainability), "From control to cohabitation: social-ecological insights on urban wildness narratives" (2026, Urban Forestry & Urban Greening), and "Beyond the patch: leveraging functional habitat delineation in fragmentation-biodiversity research" (2026, Landscape Ecology). With over 100 peer-reviewed publications and an h-index of 57, Andersson has attracted more than 7 million euros in competitive research funding as principal investigator since 2010. He holds editorial roles as Associate Editor in Chief for Ambio and has long-term involvement with Ambio and Sustainability Science. Andersson is a board member of the Society for Social-Ecological Systems (since 2025) and an expert member of the IUCN (since 2024). He has delivered invited public lectures, including "Dialog och samverkan för landskapsbaserad klimatanpassning" in 2024, and chaired events like PECS 3 - Pathways to sustainability in 2024.