Researcher receives early career conservation award

Posted on Friday 4 July 2025

Dr Hanna Pettersson is an emerging expert in human-wildlife interactions, with a focus on the preconditions that enable coexistence. She serves on a wolf conflict mediation panel in Spain and is an external advisor to an EU Horizon project on co-creating coexistence.

Her current project builds on her previous work, expanding it to explore an Incentive Payment Scheme in northern Sweden. Her project adopts a transdisciplinary approach to evaluate the implementation of a new monitoring method for wolverines, its effect on the payment scheme, and its role in promoting trust and justice in carnivore management.

The SCB Selection Committee were impressed by Hanna's extraordinary research achievements, significant contributions to policy, and meaningful engagement with local communities. They particularly commended her leadership in advancing understanding and practical approaches to human–carnivore coexistence.

She aims to combine her case studies in wildlife management with those on conflicts and just transitions in other systems, and to contribute to ongoing efforts by IPBES, the IUCN and others to embed social science into the development of coexistence programmes.