CEMUS has since the first idea of doing a multidisciplinary, environment-and-development, student-led course been a place that have brought together different people of all ages, passions, knowledges and life experiences. Students from different academic backgrounds meeting each other in intense and fun discussions, meeting guest lecturers bringing in research and practical understandings and perspectives, meeting course coordinators facilitating creative workshops and collaborative seminars. On this page we introduce CEMUS Critical Friends (affiliated teachers, researchers and contributors) that have been connected to CEMUS for a long time and now are involved in our courses and outreach activities.
Jan van Boeckel, Professor Art & Sustainability, Research Centre Art & Society, Hanze University of Applied Sciences – Netherlands
Jan van Boeckel is a Dutch artist-educator and researcher. In June 2020, he was appointed as professor art & sustainability at the Research Centre Art & Society of the Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen. Academic year 2018-2019 Jan was senior lecturer in visual art education at the Academy of Design and Crafts of Gothenburg University. That year Jan was also guest educator and researcher at CEMUS, the Centre for Environment and Development Studies in Uppsala, Sweden. From 2015 until 2018, he was professor in art education at the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn. Jan van Boeckel has also been program director in design theory at the Iceland University of the Arts in Reykjavik (2014-2015). In 2019, he started teaching painting courses at MK24 in Amsterdam. Jan has regularly taught at Schumacher College in Dartington, the UK; at University College of Southeast Norway; and in previous years also at CEMUS in Sweden.
Niclas Hällström, Director What Next Forum – Sweden
Niclas Hällström is Director of the What Next Forum in Uppsala, Sweden, founder of CEMUS and initiating CEMUS first course “Människan och naturen” (Humanity and Nature) given for the first time during the autumn semester 1992.
Doreen Stabinsky, Professor Global Environmental Politics, College of the Atlantic – USA
Doreen Stabinsky is professor of Global Environmental Politics at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, USA.
Her scholarly and other professional work lies at the intersections of land, food, and climate change. She actively researches, writes, and speaks about land and climate change issues, including recent work at the intersections of carbon markets, net zero, and nature-based solutions. She also carries out research and policy advocacy on the emerging issue of loss and damage from slow onset impacts of climate change and serves as advisor to a number of governments and international NGOs on these topics in ongoing negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.
In 2015-2016, Doreen held the first Zennström visiting professorship in Climate Change Leadership at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her most recent publications include: Environmental Politics for a Changing World: power, perspectives and practice (written with Ronnie Lipschutz) and Missing Pathways to 1.5 *C: the role of the land sector in ambitious climate action (published by the Climate, Land, Ambition and Rights Alliance (CLARA), with several co-authors). She is a contributing author to the 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) currently in development.
Pella Thiel, Educator and Activist, Rights of Nature – Sweden
Photo: Annika af Klercker