Professor, University of Lund, Sweden.

Ester’s research focuses on concepts, strategies, methods and practices social entrepreneurs use to advance social change. The methods she uses are interventionist, actively taking part in the entrepreneurial processes she also studies. In the past, she founded (and chaired for over 10 years) Förorten i Centrum, a social venture that used the collective production of mural art to work bottom-up with communities burdened by territorial stigmatization. Currently, she leads the DANIDA-funded project “Grassroots Financial Innovations for Inclusive Economic Growth” in which a group of researchers from the Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Lund University, Gothenburg University (Sweden) and JOOUST University (Kenya) are working with local urban and rural communities to set up community currencies in Western Kenya. In this doing, they hope to gain a better understanding of the diffusion strategies of grassroots innovations as well as of the economic, social and political impact of these monetary innovations on the communities introducing them. Her research has been published in top tier academic journals including Urban Studies, Organization Studies, Geoforum, Human Relations, Urban Geography, Business Ethics Quarterly, and Journal of Social Entrepreneurship. Her most recent book – Remaking money for a sustainable future: Money Commons – was published with Bristol University Press open access in April 2024.