Special Guest seminar with Dr. Marianna Strzelecka: Navigating emotional attachments in anthropogenic landscapes

Warmly welcome to the Special Guest seminar on 10th March, 13:00-15:00 at Frost Club where Dr. Marianna Strzelecka, Assoc. professor in the Linnaeus University School of Business and Economics, will give a presentation "Navigating emotional attachments in anthropogenic landscapes". Coffee and snacks will be served.

Register here by 7th of March

Abstract: Navigating emotional attachments in anthropogenic landscapes

Anthropogenic landscape change, from extractive industries such as mining to renewable energy transitions, reshapes how people experience and emotionally relate to place. This seminar positions emotional attachment as a critical force in navigating processes of landscape transformation. I argue that place attachment is not a static sentiment but, under conditions of anthropogenic change, emerges as an ongoing narrative and affective practice through which individuals and communities negotiate their relationships with disrupted environments and imagine future possibilities.

To advance this argument, I primarily draw on two studies of people–place relations in anthropogenic landscapes: the first examines post-mining landscapes, and the second focuses on a landscape undergoing the expansion of renewable energy technologies. Together, these studies highlight how emotional attachments are actively re-worked as a foundation for community resilience amid landscape change and shifting socio-ecological futures.

Marianna Strzelecka is Associate Professor at Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Her current work draws on political science, sociology, environmental psychology, and political ecology to examine the socio-cultural dimensions of human–nature relationships in leisure and tourism contexts.

At the community level, she investigates how tourism transforms the social fabric of rural communities and how these communities construct and relate to their surrounding. At the individual level, her research explores how leisure and travel shape connections to nature, with place attachment and other relational values of nature becoming increasingly central to her work. She is visiting University of Oulu through the Resilience Oulu Academy Mobility (ROAM) programme funded by the FRONT Profi7 research programme.

Register here by 7th of March