Congratulations to Katarina Pettersson, Senior Research Fellow at Nordregio, who has become a docent in Social and Economic Geography at Uppsala University, Sweden.
Katarina is specialised in gender issues, entrepreneurship and innovation policy and has led several research projects during her eight years Nordregio. In a recent project Katarina has together with Susanna Heldt Cassel, Högskolan Dalarna, studied women's tourism entrepreneurship on farms in Sweden. The tentative results suggest that women have developed innovative ideas on using the farm assets through their entrepreneurship, e.g. turning old barns into conference and event rooms, and using old pastures for mindfulness courses. The entrepreneurship has also implied that the women have transferred the traditional connection between domestic farm spaces and female activities, such as caring and catering, into the tourism businesses. However, the women are at the same time the new farm entrepreneurs and can therefore be seen to challenge traditional gendered divisions of labour and identities.
When Katarina's employment at Nordregio comes to an end in December 2013, she will continue her career as a Researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala.
The appointment as docent is based on scientific merits and pedagogical skills acquired after the PhD. The scientific merits shall be characterised by high quality, independence, originality and good presentation ability.
Nordregio wishes Katarina the very best in her new position and is looking forward to continuous cooperation.