Somya Joshi is Head of Unit – Governance and Institutions, at SEI Headquarters. Here her main focus lies on developing her team’s research capacity around decision making, stakeholder engagement, technology and process innovation towards realizing the sustainable development goals. In addition to that, she supports colleagues at SEI, on co-creation and co-production methodologies for both stakeholder dialogue and policy design.
Somya’s research has so far been focused on technological innovation, particularly in how it translates data & systems science into transparency and accountability in governance. She has over ten years of experience working with a range of partners from academia, industry, NGOs, as well as international development organisations, towards the common goal of facilitating inclusive and sustainable development.
After being awarded her doctoral degree from Manchester, UK in local participatory decision making, Somya was offered a position at Cambridge University, UK, with the mandate to investigate the efficacy of Global Development Organisations. This experience allowed her to participate in international development cooperation and methods development related to multi-level governance, with particular focus on the global development goals.
Prior to joining SEI, Somya held the position of Associate Professor (docent) in Governance and Sustainability at the Dept. of Computer and Systems Science at Stockholm University. She has published in top peer reviewed journals and presented in several international conferences – both on innovative methodological practices as well as results from fieldwork in developing nation contexts. In addition to her academic duties as a senior lecturer in Human Computer Interaction with a special focus on Sustainability and Governance, she is also affiliated with the Bolin Centre on Climate Science (where she is on the Board for the Climate Research School). Somya is a faculty member of Information and Communication Technology – The Next Generation (SRA ICT TNG) which is a consortium funded by the Swedish government. The consortium is a collaboration between KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm university and RISE Research Institutes of Sweden.
The single red thread running through Somya’s research career thus has been that of Sustainable Development and Environmental Governance. Seeing sustainability from a critical lens, she has focused on the ‘trade-offs’ and transactions that take place in order to achieve set goals.