Johan Colding is a research coordinator at HiG Urban Studio - a strategic driven research program on urban sustainability at the University of Gävle. The mission of HiG Urban Studio is to stimulate research on urban sustainability through the integration of socio-technical environmental research with that of research on social-ecological urban design. The program aims to produce world renown research for sustainable urban development with human beings at the centre. Such development needs to be resilient and contained within the planet’s carrying capacity to deliver critical ecological and social services and be based on the recognition that it is individual actions by people, governments, NGOs and firms that will drive the change towards sustainability. The HiG Urban Studio will thus strive to translate interdisciplinary based urban research into trans-disciplinary collaborations and co-creation projects with actors outside academia. The research in HiG Urban Studio is financed by core means from the University of Gävle as well as by external research grants.

Johan is also director of the program Urban Social-Ecological Systems at the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, which is an international research institute under the auspices of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences http://www.beijer.kva.se. He also acts as co-theme leader of urban research at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, which is an international centre of excellence for resilience and sustainability science. The centre is a joint initiative between Stockholm University and the Beijer Institute http://www.stockholmresilience.org.