Sara Elfstrand is a programme coordinator at SwedBio, a knowledge interface on resilience and development at Stockholm Resilience Centre

Elfstrand’s work focuses on biodiversity, ecosystem services and resilience, and their role in relation to poverty alleviation. She has been working with SwedBio since 2008, and has worked on approaches for applying resilience thinking in practice in collaboration with international partners, as well as through multi-actor dialogues to promote knowledge exchange related to resilience assessments and integration of social-ecological resilience principles or resilience thinking and development (see dialogue seminar report). Elfstrand has also been involved in the development of an online course on resilience assessments for development practitioners together with UNDP and SRC education and researchers.

As programme coordinator for SwedBio, Elfstrand coordinates the Collaborative Programme and the overall programme planning and reporting of SwedBio. SwedBio is working with a broad network of actors in policy and practice processes. Sara is responsible in particular for collaborations under SwedBio’s focal area Livelihoods, Food and Health.

Elfstrand is an agronomist with an interest in agroecology and agricultural biodiversity as a base for sustainable management and governance of social-ecological landscapes. See for example, this mapping study. She represents SwedBio in the steering committee of the Agroforestry Network, a Sweden-based platform for international agroforestry practice.

Elfstrand has a research background in soil biology. Before joining SwedBio she worked in an interdisciplinary research programme on agroecology, focusing on the impact of the use of green manure on soil fertility in organic crop production systems. She received her PhD from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in 2007.