Lunch seminar: Navigating the “polycrisis”: conceptual, empirical, and institutional frontiers

Crises no longer emerge in isolation. Instead, they overlap and amplify one another, in a process referred to as polycrisis.

This talk explores a multi-pronged research project led at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Stockholm Resilience Centre, aimed at unpacking this emerging concept. It begins with a conceptual analysis of what constitutes a polycrisis, grounded in social-ecological systems approach. The work then turns to the construction of a long-term, multi-scale database of historical crises (floods, democratic backsliding, etc.) to identify recurring patterns of interaction. Finally, the research examines the gap between how crises are perceived and how they unfold in practice, exposing key cognitive, institutional, and political blind spots that hinder effective governance.

The first 20 to arrive will get a vegetarian wrap and a soft drink!

Dr. Louis Delannoy is a Researcher for the Global Economic Dynamics and the Biosphere programme (GEDB) of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and the Stockholm Resilience Centre. A transdisciplinary researcher, Louis combines various tools to understand how crises are transferred, absorbed and linked across space, time and sectors of society. He specifically focuses on the conceptualisation and formalisation of polycrisis, and the development of a long-term multi-scale database on historical shocks and crises.

Register for the seminar