Historian Sverker Sörlin has always been interested in understanding how everything in the world “hangs together.” Although he trained to be a high school teacher, he never used the degree. Instead, he jumped straight into his PhD at Umeå University in Sweden where he studied the history of science and ideas. “I was always more interested in finding things out,” he says.
Sörlin has been a professor for nearly 30 years. Although currently a professor of environmental history at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, his academic pursuits aren’t constrained by his title. In addition to studying forestry, pollution, and natural resources through the lens of history, Sörlin’s intellectual forays also touch upon the social sciences, politics, and ethnography.
Sörlin also loves to disperse knowledge. “It’s a privilege to know things, and I wish people to know more,” he says. He travels frequently to give talks and serves as ...
