Boredom is, according to the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, repelling. At the same time, boredom is a feeling that has something essential to tell us about the way we are and how we act in the world. When teachers become bored, they are confronted with questions about the teacher as a person, the profession as such, and the pedagogical and cultural aspects that influence their day-to-day working lives. 

The aim of this thesis, which is anchored within the Theory of practical knowledge, is to investigate and contribute to an understanding of how different forms of boredom manifest themselves in the everyday working lives of upper secondary school teachers in Sweden and Finland. The aim is also to investigate the existential dimensions expressed through boredom. The empirical data for this thesis consists of semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions.

The study reveals that four forms of boredom manifest themselves. The first form, Langeweile of everyday life, manifests itself in working life as closely linked to the cyclical nature of the profession. Here, the temporal dimension of the emotion and the question of freedom and meaning in the repetitive nature of the work are brought to the fore. The second form, boredom while waiting, manifests itself in situations where teachers are supervising while pupils sit examinations. Here, dimensions of loss of meaning and strangeness are made visible, but also boredom as something shameful. The third kind of boredom, self-boredom within compulsory fun, manifests itself in a situational force field charged by two imperatives: school must be boring and school must be fun. Here, a dimension of an inauthentic teacher-self comes to the fore. The fourth form, tedium ad absurdum, manifests itself in a situation where ‘brain dead’ meaningless documentation and documentation aimed at supporting pupils’ learning collide. Here, in particular, an existential dimension of the absurd comes to the fore. 

In conclusion, drawing inspiration from the philosopher Albert Camus take on revolt the thesis discusses how teachers draw a line by saying an emphatic ‘no!’ to that which threatens to cross the line, while simultaneously saying ‘yes!’ to, amongst other things, the professional expertise they possess and the values inherent in the profession that must be defended. Overall, the thesis helps to demonstrate that boredom can contribute to a deeper self-understanding, professional reflection and a renewed commitment to the profession’s core mission. 

This thesis examines how forests in the Baltic–Nordic region are increasingly situated at the intersection of climate policy, natural resource governance, and emerging security concerns. Drawing on perspectives from multi-level governance, nexus thinking, and climate security, it analyzes how forests are being reframed as strategic assets in a rapidly evolving geopolitical and environmental context. The thesis focuses on Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, and Sweden - countries with extensive forest resources that play vital ecological, economic, and infrastructural roles. These forests are central to achieving EU climate targets, supporting energy transitions, and responding to growing geopolitical uncertainties. To place these national and regional perspectives in a broader governance context, the thesis also compares Baltic-Nordic forest governance with the case of Forest Europe, a voluntary panEuropean soft law platform where states, experts, and organizations negotiate shared understandings of Sustainable Forest Management, reporting practices, and forest policy direction. Drawing on 47 semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and policy analysis of EU strategies, national adaptation plans, national energy strategies, and Forest Europe processes, the thesis shows that EU ambitions often exceed national implementation capacities and lack mechanisms to support cross-sectoral coordination. Although EU-level policy frames climate security broadly through resilience and ecosystem protection, national perspectives emphasize forests as vital for energy independence, economic continuity, and societal stability. This misalignment leads to gaps between high-level objectives and local practice. The comparison with Forest Europe further shows how forest governance is also shaped through non-binding, consensus-based processes in which European forest authority is produced through knowledge-sharing, procedural legitimacy, and sustained negotiation rather than through legal enforcement. Furthermore, the thesis shows that forest governance is increasingly shaped by interdependencies across water, energy, food, and forest systems. Geopolitical disruptions have intensified reliance on domestic biomass, reshaped roundwood markets, and elevated the role of forests as buffers against external shocks. However, policy integration remains fragmented, and securitization can further constrain public debate on forest use unless it is grounded in inclusive, transparent, and evidence-based governance. The Forest Europe case highlights both the potential and the limits of soft law governance: while voluntary platforms can strengthen coordination, shared learning, and policy coherence, their credibility depends on meaningful participation, openness, and durable institutional capacity. Further research is needed to analyze how climate security framings evolve in response to geopolitical instability,how forest-based energy systems can balance short-term security needs with long-term ecological integrity, and how soft law governance platforms at EU and pan-European levels can reinforce their credibility and durability in an era of accelerating environmental and political change. The thesis suggests that forests increasingly function as critical infrastructures for climate mitigation, biodiversity, energy stability, and national resilience. To move towards more coherent and legitimate forest governance in the Baltic–Nordic region and beyond, future work should further examine how cross-level coordination mechanisms can be strengthened, how stakeholder engagement can be made more inclusive, and how institutional capacities can be improved to support integrated, nexus-based approaches.

The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda calls for “transforming our world”, spurring demands for environmental knowledge such as climate models, carbon budgets, and policy roadmaps. Simultaneously, sustainability governance has increasingly promoted co-produced, actionable science involving diverse societal actors. Yet progress towards global sustainability goals remains limited. Why does more collaborative knowledge not necessarily result in transformative action? This thesis argues that the answer lies in prevailing knowledge politics, which often treats knowledge as technical expertise and power as the capacity to implement it. Such a view obscures the complex ways in which knowledge and action are co-created. To address this limitation, the thesis develops more nuanced understandings of power, knowledge, and their interrelations. It argues that co-production does not automatically generate transformation because it is shaped by contested knowledge-power relations. Drawing on co-production as an idiom, the thesis examines how co-production as practice is imagined and performed, and how these imaginaries enable or constrain pathways towards contextually envisioned sustainability futures. Empirically, the thesis analyses sustainability knowledge production and use across Swedish sustainability and research policies, two transdisciplinary research programmes, and the Russian climate lawsuit before the European Court of Human Rights. While these arenas are informed by dominant imaginaries of knowledge and sustainability, actors reinterpret and contest them in ways that produce diverse forms of action, from ocean science initiatives to climate justice claims. By examining these encounters as political spaces where knowledge and action meet, the thesis explores how co-production can both support and hinder transformative change towards sustainability.