Gustav Cederlöf
About Gustav Cederlöf
Associate Professor of Environmental Social Science
I am an environmental geographer specialising in the politics and cultural dimensions of environmental change. My research focuses on the relationship between energy systems and social life and, especially, the political economy of energy transitions. I have carried out fieldwork in Cuba over long periods and am interested in lived experiences of radical socio-environmental change.
I joined the School of Global Studies in 2021 following eight years at King’s College London. I received a PhD in Geography from King’s and was later a Teaching Fellow in the university’s Department of International Development. In 2018–19 I held an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship in a collaboration between King’s College London, Imperial College London and Queen Mary University of London, after which I took up a lectureship in Liberal Arts & Geography at King’s. I previously also taught in the Department of Geography & Environment at the London School of Economics.
Qualifications
- 2010 BA in Development Studies, Uppsala University
- 2013 MSc in Human Ecology, Lund University
- 2017 PhD in Geography, King’s College London
Research themes
My research examines interdisciplinary questions around energy use as a physical, political, and cultural phenomenon. This relates to a broader interest in how environmental changes interact with different forms of social power and inequality, for example in the context of an energy and climate transition.
A geographer by training, I focus on how the uses of different energy sources enable social and economic activities within certain spatial patterns, and how energy transitions subsequently reconfigure these patterns with uneven political, economic, and social outcomes. I am particularly interested in the links between energy production and land use; infrastructure and state formation; and energy use and urban form.
Next to the focus on the environment, I have expertise in Cuban and socialist history.
I am the author of two books, The Low-Carbon Contradiction: Energy Transition, Geopolitics, and the Infrastructural State in Cuba (University of California Press, 2023) and Discovering Political Ecology (with A. Loftus, Routledge, 2024).
Public engagement
- “The Low-Carbon Contradiction” (New Books Network)
- “Is Cuba the world’s most sustainable country?” (UC Press Blog)
- “Critical Infrastructure / Realities Left Vacant” (Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, n.b.k.)
Teaching
I am the Programme Lead for the BA in Global Studies. I also teach and supervise across the School’s offering in human ecology. I currently convene the following courses:
Undergraduate
- HU1221 Sustainable Cities
Postgraduate
- ESD400 Economy, Global Inequality and Pathways to Sustainability
- SFGS343 Political Ecology: Conflict, Power and Sustainability