I am a researcher at the Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg. I received my PhD in Economics from Stockholm University in September 2024.

My main research interests are in economic development and environmental economics.

Email: nicklas.nordfors@economics.gu.se

Publications

A robot-assisted pipeline to rapidly scan 1.7 million historical aerial photographs, npj Heritage Science 14(23), 2026
(with Sheila Masson, Alan Potts, Allan Williams, Steve Berggreen, Kevin McLaren, Sam Martin, Eugenio Noda, Nic Ruecroft, Hannah Druckenmiller, Solomon Hsiang, Andreas Madestam, and Anna Tompsett)

Working papers

A postcolonial land cover transition in the Caribbean
(with Hannah Druckenmiller Luna Yue Huang, Trinetta Chong, Shruti Jain, Solomon Hsiang, Andreas Madestam, Anna Tompsett

Trade and pollution: Evidence from India
(with Malin Niemi and Anna Tompsett)
arXiv pre-print

Droughts and the growth of cities
Pre-print

Work in progress

Combining aerial photography and machine learning to map 20th century African urban change
(with Simon Greenhill, Suraj R. Nair, Hannah Druckenmiller, Joel Ferguson, Solomon Hsiang, Andreas Madestam, Hikari Murayama, Eugenio Noda, Cornelia Paulik, Anna Tompsett, and Sherrie Wang)

60 years of global environmental change 1939-1999: digitization of 1.6 million historical aerial photographs
(with Aerial History Project)