Agnes Andersson

Presentation

Agnes Andersson Djurfeldt is a Professor in Human Geography with a focus on development geography. Her research interests focus on rural based processes of change within and outside agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa involving shifting rural and multi-spatial livelihoods, gender based access to productive resources within and outside agriculture, consumption and intra-household division of labor and income. Recent research interests include lower level urbanization and the possibilities for inclusive urban growth and how this is related to kinship relations, linkages to rural agriculture and local governance. 

Agnes has been the principal investigator of five research projects which together funded the research of the Afrint group, between 2011 and 2020. Afrint is an interdisciplinary group of researchers engaging researchers from six research institutions in Africa. The group has collected data in four rounds from around 4000 households in sub-Saharan Africa to study changes in rural livelihoods from 2002 onwards.

Methodologically she uses a mixed methods approach combining the use of quantitative data, with qualitative field work at the individual, household and village level. She has carried out fieldwork mainly in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

She has taught at the masters level for a number of years, especially in the Lund University Master of International Development and Management, where she was the Programme Director for several years. At present she is involved in the course on Rural and Urban Livelihoods within the programme and also supervises masters and doctoral theses.

Agnes is the course convenor of the Faculty of Social Science Ph.D course within the Agenda 2030 graduate school

She is regularly involved in public events and stakeholder meetings related to food security, gender and agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Current research projects

At present Agnes is the principal investigator of the VR funded project, Explaining inclusive lower-level urbanization in Tanzania and Uganda, 2021-2023.

The project studies lower level urbanization in Uganda and Tanzania, aiming to assess under what social, economic and spatial conditions that processes of urbanization at the lowest level of the urban hierarchy can promote the livelihoods and welfare of residents in small towns.

Theoretically the project combines perspectives from urban systems theory with perspectives on multi-local livelihoods to situate urbanisation processes spatially and economically, with respect to the urban system, rural surroundings and local business structure, politically in terms of local governance and socially in relation to kinship and multi-local livelihoods. The methodology combines remote sensing data analysis and the collection of quantitative data and qualitative interviews in selected sites in Tanzania and Uganda.