Lennart Olsson is Professor of Geography at Lund University and the founder of LUCSUS (Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies), for which he was the director until August 2016. He was also the PI and coordinator of the 10-year Linnaeus Centre LUCID (Lund University Centre of Excellence for Integration of Social and Natural Dimensions of Sustainability) 2008 - 2018. His research fields include human-nature interactions in the context of land degradation, climate change and food security/sovereignty in Africa and globally. His current research focuses on the politics of agriculture and climate change with a special interest in radical agricultural change. He has had research positions in Australia, USA and Hong Kong and participated in several international assignments including the IPCC and UNEP-GEO assessments. He was coordinating lead author (CLA) for the chapter on livelihoods and poverty (Chapter 13) in IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report, WG II, 2011-14, and CLA for the chapter on Land Degradation in the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land (2017-19). In 2023 he was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant: The PERENNIAL Project. Since 2019, he is a member of  the Board of Directors of the Land Institute, Kansas, USA.