Malin Nystrand

Peace and Development Research
BSc, Postgraduate student
 

About

Malin has a BA in Business Administration and Economics and an MA in Economics, based on studies at Linköping University, University of East Anglia (UK) and Gothenburg University. She worked for several years with studies and evaluations within international development cooperation before she returned to academics for a PhD education in Peace and Development Research at Gothenburg University.

The PhD thesis on social embeddedness of business owners in Uganda will be defended during 2012. Malin has also been teaching regularly since 2005, primarily within Global Studies and Global Development Studies at School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University.

Areas fo interest

The main theoretical areas of interest are economics as social science and interdisciplinary perspectives on economic actors and practices. Economic actors are studied primarily from an embeddedness perspective, i.e. from the standpoint that economic actors are social actors and embedded in social structures and that this affects their economic behaviour.

Malin is also interested in the development discourse in general and in problematising the concept and practice of ‘development’. Her main interest within this field is local practices and contextualisation in relation to the international discourse.

Empirically Malin has studied these issues primarily in East Africa, mainly in Uganda.  

Current research

The PhD thesis that will be defended during 2012 is a study of social embeddedness of local business owners in Uganda.

A post-doc research project has been initiated which intends to study the role of local business owners in reconstruction after war in Northern Uganda.

Teaching and tutoring

Malin teach regularly within the following courses:

• Global development studies, basic course ‘Poverty, Resources and Redistribution’
• Global studies, course: ‘Project Management and Evaluation’
• Teacher program, Social Science, course: ‘Global Development and Human Rights’
• Africa studies, course: ‘Economic conditions and international development cooperation in Africa’
• Supervision of Bachelor Theses within Global Studies
   

Malin is course director for the courses ‘Poverty, Resources and Redistribution’ and ‘Project Management and Evaluation’. She has developed the course ‘Project Management and Evaluation’ from scratch and regularly participate in course development of the other courses as well.