Moa Dahlberg

About me

Parental leave 1 July 2025 - 1 July 2026

Presentation 

Moa Dahlberg has been a Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science since August 2024.

Moa Dahlberg has a PhD in Political Science from the Political Science Unit, Luleå University of Technology. She received her MSc in Development Studies from the Department of Government at Uppsala University in 2014 and her BSc in Development and International Cooperation at Södertörn University in 2011.

During her academic studies and previous work, she has conducted field research in Tanzania, Kenya, and South Africa on themes such as democratization, migration, gender, violence, and land rights. She has also been a visiting researcher at the Department of Political Science at the University of Cape Town.

Research

Moa Dahlberg's research focuses on three areas: 1) traditional institutions, 2) governance of natural resources, and 2) gender and migration.

In her PhD, Moa Dahlberg examined how the state's ability to establish and enforce collective rules in areas of limited statehood is shaped by its interactions with local authorities. More specifically, she studied how hybrid governance arrangements with traditional authorities influence the state's capacity to govern. The empirical focus was wildlife management in National Parks in Southern Africa, and the research relied on extensive qualitative fieldwork and surveys collected in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. Articles from the thesis have been published, for example, in Governance (Dahlberg and Söderberg, 2024) and the Journal of Development Studies (Dahlberg, Matti, and Ntuli, forthcoming).

Selection of articles in progress:

"Barriers to Collaboration between State and Traditional Authorities in Conservation in Southern Africa" ​​with A. Sundström and H. Ntuli. Under review.

"The Potential of State-Driven Collaborative Governance in Emerging Environmental Policy Areas" with A. Sandström

"Drivers of participation in illicit resource extraction and environmental dependence in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area" with H. Ntuli, E. Muchapondwa and Boscow Okumu

She currently works on two research projects. The first one Towards a more Adaptive Swedish Wild Boar Management System with Enhanced Collective Action Capability: Lessons from ASF outbreaks in Sweden and abroad, financed by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, investigates how management systems can enhance their capacity to prevent, detect, and promptly respond to emerging ecological needs, such as outbreaks of African Swine Fever. The second project, "Sustainable Culture-driven Development of Industrial Locations," is a seed project, funded by Natural Resources for Sustainable Transitions (SUN), which aims to integrate the industrial and cultural sectors to contribute to social sustainability, community engagement, and place attractiveness in industrial communities in northern Sweden that are affected by the green transition.

She has previously worked on the following research projects:

• 2017 - 2022 - “Corruption and Wildlife Management: Collective Action in Transnationally Protected Reserves" (The Swedish Research Council).
• 2022 - 2024 "Waging war to save the peace parks: A study of militarization of wildlife management” (The Swedish Research Council).
• 2020 - 2024 "Managing a Moving Resource: Opportunities for, and Obstacles to, Collective Action in Swedish Wild Boar Management" (The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency).

Teaching

Moa Dahlberg teaches on:

• International Politics A
• Democracy, Development, and Democratization
• Local Government A
• Integration course - Globalization
• Degree project in political science, Bachelor's level