As the Director of Stockholm Resilience Centre, Line Gordon oversees the operational and strategic development of the organisation, while conducting transdisciplinary research on the role of food and water systems for Biosphere resilience.

In this role, Line Gordon provides the organisational and strategic leadership to develop the scientific direction, education, and engagement done at Stockholm Resilience Centre. She has over 20 years of experience leading interdisciplinary teams in Sustainability Science. Her leadership focuses on investing in a collaborative, trust-based and creative working culture that enables us to achieve impact, while ensuring that scientific integrity underpins all our work.

Gordon's research focuses on water and food systems as key entry points to build Biosphere resilience and improve governance of social-ecological systems, livelihoods, and public health. Her research is problem-oriented, interdisciplinary, and highly collaborative. She often leads and contributes to collaborations that bridge disciplines and technical skills to advance scientific frontiers. Gordon's current research focuses primarily on the role of food system transformation for public and planetary health. This work includes being one of the commissioners for the The EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy, sustainable, and just food systems - The Lancet, developing national Swedish food systems scenarios in the Mistra Food Futures programme, and working on gastronomic landscapes.

Gordon is also the founder and Strategic Leader of PLATE – Swedish Centre for Resilient Meals, a national centre funded by Formas in collaboration with several Swedish academic and non-academic partners.

She has previously done research on livelihood resilience and ecosystem services in sub-Saharan Africa (Burkina Faso, Tanzania, South Africa, Senegal, and Ghana), and on the critical roles of “invisible water flows” across local to global scales, in particular highlighting how global land use change, evaporation and precipitation interact.

Gordon has an undergraduate in biology. She received her PhD in 2003 in Natural Resources Management, Department of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University with a dissertation on “Land Use, Freshwater Flows and Ecosystem Services in an Era of Global Change”. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and has been a visiting researcher at University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa, CIRAD in France, McGill University in Canada, and STIAS - the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

She was appointed the Curt Bergfors Professor in Sustainability Science with a focus on food systems in 2021.

Line Gordon serves on numerous boards and advisory bodies. In 2025, she joined the Board of the Family Kamprad Foundation and the Advisory Board of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 2024, she became a board member of Future Earth Global Hub Stockholm and the Curt Bergfors Foundation.

She has served on the Science Advisory Board of the Serrapilheira Institute (Brazil) since 2023 and on the Advisory Council of the FABLE Consortium since 2022. Since 2021, she has been a member of the Governing Board of the Centre for Sustainability Transitions at Stellenbosch University and contributed to the Advisory Group of the Swedish Committee on food system research at Formas.

In 2020, she became Vice Chair of the Board of SUCCeSS and joined the Earth League steering committee and the jury of the Food Planet Prize, helping establish its secretariat.

Her long-standing roles include the Global Resilience Partnership Advisory Council and the Stockholm Water Prize Jury (since 2018), as well as the Menus of Change Scientific and Technical Committee (2018–2021). Earlier roles include CGIAR (2012–2014), Stockholm World Water Week (2009–2014), and the Swedish National Committees for IGBP and WCRP (2004–2006).

Awards and achievements

• 2024 – Sir John Crawford Memorial Address, Crawford Fund Annual Conference, Australia
• 2024 – Elected Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry, Sweden
• 2020 – Utstickarpriset awarded to the EAT-Lancet Commission
• 2004 – Award from the King Carl XVI Gustaf 50-Year Foundation for her PhD thesis (annual award recognizing outstanding doctoral theses in environmental sciences)
• 2000 – The Outstanding Young Person Award, Osaka Junior Chamber, Japan
  

Supervision

Previous PhD students: Elin Enfors (2004-2009), Rebecka Malinga (2016), Patrick Keys (2016), Hanna Sinare (2016), Lan Wang-Erlandsson (2017), Kajsa Resare Sahlin (2025, Co-supervisor), Charlotte Bunge (2025)