Three new doctoral fellows at SUM

We welcome three new doctoral research fellows: Sarah Cechvala, Johannes Volden and Guisela Camacho Mejia.

Get to know the new research fellows

Sarah Cechvala has over 10 years of experience as a corporate social responsibility professional and a researcher on conflict sensitive business practice, company-community relations, human rights due diligence for companies, and accountability for the aid sector. Over the years, she has worked with corporate practitioners and communities in fragile and conflict affected states in order to enhance company-community relations and to strengthen corporate social performance management systems. She holds an MA in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University. 

Her doctoral project will apply a systems lens to understand the role of small-medium enterprises as agents of peace and conflict in violent urban settings. Her research is part of the UrbanSME project  and the Governance for Sustainable Development research group at SUM. 

Johannes Volden has a background in Human Geography from Durham University and holds an M.Phil. in interdisciplinary environment and development studies from SUM. He has also worked at SUM as a researcher and held various assistant positions.

Since submitting his master’s thesis about consumer air-travel, he has worked on topics related to (un)sustainable everyday practices and meat consumption through the projects MEATigation: Meat in Norwegian Food Practices and From lock down to lock in? COVID-19, changing social practices and transitioning to sustainable lifestyles.

His doctoral project Meating the Anthropocene: Barriers and opportunities for ‘new sustainable proteins’ in Norway focuses on the possibilities of sustainably shifting meat consumption towards alternative proteins. The project has ties to the research centre INCLUDE, the MEATigation project, and the research group on Sustainable consumption and energy equity.

Guisela Camacho Mejia holds a Master’s Degree in the Theory and Practice of Human Rights by the University of Oslo and a Bachelor Degree in Law by the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. She has worked as legal intern at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights and as a teaching assistant at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. Her past research has focused on environmental injustices in private protected areas, criminalization of environmental damage and private international law.

Her doctoral project What is for dinner today? Food injustice among displaced women and female-headed households in Cauca, Colombia will use food justice as an analytical framework to understand the nature and root causes of food insecurity in Cauca-Colombia. She is part of the Rural Transformations research group.