BIOPATH profile portraits: Fredrik Svahn
This is the first of a series of research portraits of the many people involved in Mistra BIOPATH research in a broad range of disciplnes and from several Universities in Sweden and Great Britain.
Professor Fredrik Svahn, University of Gothenburg
Fredrik Svahn is Professor at the Department of Applied Information Technology, Gothenburg University and contributing to Mistra BIOPATH research with his expertise in large-scale data and text analysis. Here is an overview of his work and how it aligns with the impact pathways of Mistra BIOPATH.
What is going on in your research field at the moment?
I consider myself part of Information Systems. This is a field that studies how digital technologies shape organizations, work, and society. It connects the technical with the social — exploring how people and institutions adopt, adapt, and are transformed by digital technologies. At the moment, artificial intelligence is the dominant topic in the field. Researchers are examining how AI changes organisational decision-making, business models, and human behaviour, as well as its broader ethical and societal implications.
How does your research align with the impact pathways in Mistra BIOPATH?
My contribution to BIOPATH is to bring digital and computational perspectives into the study of biodiversity engagement. I use large-scale textual data — so far, I have worked with transcripts from corporate earnings calls — to understand how companies discuss and act on biodiversity issues. By applying computational text analysis and network methods, I hope to map how biodiversity is talked about in the corporate world and assess how governance frameworks such as TNFD influence those discussions in practice.
Tell us about your research journey?
Most of my research has been qualitative, exploring how digital technologies enable new forms of organizing and innovation. In recent years, I’ve shifted toward computational methods, integrating techniques from natural language processing and network analysis. This shift allows me to study digital traces and discourses at a scale, while keeping an interpretive and theory-driven perspective.
What do you see as additional values of working in an interdisciplinary research programme?
Interdisciplinary collaboration opens up entirely new ways of framing questions. Coming from information systems, I approach biodiversity as a socio-technical. Working with researchers in accounting, finance, biology, expands my understanding of what biodiversity means across different domains, and how digital tools can help bridge those worlds.
In what ways do you interact with or collaborate with external stakeholders in your research?
In my broader research, I often work closely with organizations, policymakers, and technology developers. However, in Mistra BIOPATH, my focus is on building and analysing a large database of corporate communication. Although I am not directly collaborating with external stakeholders, the research will be able to inform and enable such collaborations as it progresses.