Alexander Stagnell

Short presentation

Alexander Stagnell is a researcher in rhetoric at the Department of Literature and Rhetoric, Uppsala University, and Professor of Communication at BI Norwegian Business School, Oslo. At Uppsala he leads the Formas-funded project Sustainable Economies? The Swedish Riksbank and Climate Change (2026–), which examines how the Riksbank understands and communicates sustainability under its new statutory mandate, and how central bank sustainability rhetoric can be analysed.

Keywords

• Institutional rhetoric
• central bank communication
• populism and democracy
• diplomacy
• sophistics
• history of rhetoric
• Barbara Cassin
• the Ljubljana School

Biography

Stagnell's research asks how our perception of political and economic institutions change over time. The question has taken him through three fields. His doctoral thesis analysed diplomacy as an ideological state apparatus, from the French Revolution to the digital age. An international postdoc funded by the Swedish Research Council traced the figure of the sophist in political thought since the late 1960s to understand what the populist moment tells us about democracy. He now studies central banks, where economic experts believe that they must explain themselves to citizens.

His approach draws on the concepts and history of rhetoric, from the ancient sophists to contemporary philosophy. He introduced Barbara Cassin's work to Swedish readers and has written a rhetorical history of the Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis. He has taught rhetoric for fifteen years at Södertörn University, Uppsala University and BI Norwegian Business School.

Current project

2026– Sustainable Economies? The Swedish Riksbank and Climate Change. Project lead. Formas.

Completed projects

2021–2024 The Return of the Sophists? Post-Truth, Democracy and Rhetoric in the Populist Moment. Swedish Research Council, international postdoc.

2021–2022 Post-Communist Communism in Eastern Europe. Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies.

2019–2022 Barbara Cassin and Sophistics. Åke Wiberg Foundation, Helge Ax:son Johnson Foundation.

Research

Sustainable Economies? The Swedish Riksbank and Climate Change

The possibility of shaping ecologically sustainable markets remains a persistent challenge within the sciences. At the same time, Swedish policymakers have recently mandated the Riksbank, with its overarching responsibility for economic stability, to also incorporate a sustainability perspective into its operations. Both representatives of the Riksbank and researchers in the field emphasize that these measures, for reasons of effectiveness, presuppose extensive communicative efforts on the part of the central bank. In other words, the effective execution of the Riksbank’s activities – including its new sustainability practices – requires a clear communicative focus.

This project explores how sustainable economies are framed in the rhetoric of the Swedish Riksbank. It examines the images of sustainability used in the Riksbank’s communication, how these images have evolved over time, and how they relate to the sustainability mandate introduced in the 2023 Law of the Riksbank. Additionally, the project aims to develop a theoretico-methodological framework for understanding central bank sustainability rhetoric.

The project consists of four work packages. Package I and II will run in parallel during the first 21 months of the project and consist of empirical analyses of the Riksbank's sustainability rhetoric. The third part of the project will run for 16 months and consist of a synthesis of the empirical findings and an evaluation of the Riksbank's overall sustainability communication in light of the new Riksbank Act. Here, the aim is to understand how the Riksbank, in their communication, expresses their interpretation of the new sustainability mandates. Finally, during the concluding 11 months, the project will focus on developing a theoretico-methodological framework for further studies of central banks' sustainability rhetoric.

The project challenges existing research on central bank communication by analyzing the Riksbank’s rhetoric in context, rather than reducing language to numerical values. The project also criticizes current research on central bank sustainability by focusing on its actual practices, rather than prescribing normative solutions. Finally, it addresses gaps in understanding how government sustainability mandates interact with central bank independence.

The societal relevance lies in providing scientific approaches and data aiding government institutions and the public in their task of overseeing of the Riksbank’s practices.