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This article explores how invasive alien species are imagined, represented, and regulated in contemporary Sweden, focusing on the entanglement between biological threat, cultural fear, and bureaucratic control. Drawing on ethnographic material, policy analysis, and consultation documents, it examines how plants and animals such as Japanese knotweed, giant hogweed, and the “killer slug” are framed through tropes of monstrosity in media, legislation, and public discourse. Using monster theory (Cohen 1996) and scholarship on lists and classification, the article argues that monstrosity not only shapes perceptions of invasive species but also infuses the legal and administrative systems designed to contain them. The emerging regulating complex, a network of EU and Swedish regulations, lists, and responsibilities, appears both as a tool for ecological order and as a hybrid, excessive, and unruly entity in itself. The study shows how attempts to tame ecological disorder through listing practices mirror the very qualities attributed to invasive species: hybridity, excess, and uncontrollability. The result is a perfect monster of the present environmental moment – an assemblage of biological and bureaucratic life that reflects contemporary anxieties about nature, governance, and the limits of human control.

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are increasingly promoted as responses to interconnected climate, biodiversity, and societal challenges. This report explores what NbS are, clarifies where conceptual confusion arises, and outlines their benefits and limitations, focusing on decision-making, knowledge and justice. The themes in the report were shaped at a workshop held in May 2025 with a newly established NbS network.  

The NbS network, supported by UUniCORN catalyst funding, is investigating how the use of NbS might help mitigate conflicts related to biodiversity protection and natural resource use. Its vision is to develop new research collaborations within UU that contribute to healthy, resilient, and biodiverse landscapes while also meeting diverse societal needs. Insights from network members are featured throughout the report. 

During the Garden Lupine’s two centuries of presence in Sweden, its apprehension has been marked by cultural reconfigurations – from an appreciated garden plant, through being a token for Swedish midsummer to being deemed an invasive alien species and ecological threat. With the purpose of deepening the understanding of how environmental management works as a nexus of nature and culture, this article analyzes ‘The Great Lupine Combat Day’, to show how the lifecycle of plants and culturally imbued actions and preferences interact. By employing ethnographic methods and qualitative source material to enable a cultural analysis of the traditionalization of eradicating invasive species, the article shows how this annual event ties together an established annual calendar, the life cycle and visuality of plants, biodiversity crises, an idealized aesthetics feature of Swedish nature, and eradication practices. In essence, the management of the Garden Lupine serves as a reminder of how nature is always culture.

Längs med många av landets vägar växer blomsterlupiner – blålila, rosa och vita, högresta och synliga. Med lupinernas ökande spridning utanför ordnade trädgårdars staket och närvaro i media såväl som i myndighetsarbete har blommans färgsprakande existens och livskraft börjat uppfattas på ett nytt sätt och skifta färg mot något dystrare.

I Stockholm är skogen ofta närmare än man kan tro. Här har vi upptäckt och samlat stockholmsnära terrängspår och vandringsleder där vi upplevt, förundrats, kämpat, snubblat, grubblat och skrattat oss igenom timmar och mil av skogsstigar. Boken presenterar 50 trailrundor som ligger max en timmes bilresa från Stockholms innerstad. Det här är en inspirerande guidebok där text, fotografier och kartor hjälper dig att hitta ut, och hitta rätt. Dessutom betraktar vi med kulturgeografens blick landskapen vi rör oss i. Här får du följa med in i några av platsernas spännande och ibland udda förflutna.

Stockholms många skogsspår möjliggör verkligen upplevelselöpning i vardagen. Upptäckarglädjen i kombination med det fokus i nuet som krävs för att springa över stigarnas stenar och rötter gör varje träningspass unikt och till ett möte med nya platser. Du ska inte ut och träna, du ska ut på äventyr!

In Sweden, common elementary schools (folkskolan) were introduced in the 1840s. As a consequence, children started walking to and from school several days per week. The school route, as both place and practice, impacted society and families; it created new ways and needs in everyday life. From a time-geographic perspective, the article investigates children's mobility in everyday life in order to understand what walking to school encompassed. Moreover, whereas the common narrative of school routes in the past emphasizes distances and challenges of the journeys it often omits the adult world's comprehension and involvement. The aim of the article is to increase understandings of the school route as a phenomenon and its meanings in everyday life from a historical perspective. Through qualitative analysis of memoirs and societal discussions, the authors focus on the difficulties (conceptualized as "weights") that the school routes could entail and how the adult world tried to manage them (conceptualized as "reliefs"). One conclusion is that society and families were aware of, and tried to deal with, those hardships, and a second is that the school route was more than a distance. In this regard, variations in families' geographical and socioeconomic positions and the physical landscape played crucial roles.