Graduate School Blog

This weekly digest is a collection of news, upcoming events and other opportunities from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University and the wider area, compiled for Graduate School students.

• Student event: Sign up for Graduate School’s Potluck!
• Seminar: Gendering Gangs: Critical Perspectives on Youth, Masculinities, Violence, and the Gang Ethos in Sweden
• Workshop: Embodied methods: creative possibilites in research
• Lecture: Gender, Families, and Wealth Accumulation Among Only Daughters
• Film screening: My Five Year Plan
• Webinar: Women Entrepreneurship, Social Enterprises and Women Empowerment
• Student Support: Come by with your text! (drop-in)
• Morning café conversation on sustainability, music, and climate action with Sam Goldscheider
• EUGLOH Sustainable Development Weeks

Sign up for Graduate School’s Potluck!

Student event

Warm Welcome to Graduate School’s Lunch Potluck 18 September between 12:00 to 13:30 at Student Lounge, Gamla kirurgen, second floor.

If you’re keen, bring a dish and come socialize with other Graduate School students. Bonus points to those who bring a dish traditional to the country they come from and/or for vegan dishes! Or maybe you want to bring a light snack or something sweet? Whatever your bike can carry, we welcome it!

The potluck will be held in the Graduate School Student Lounge in Gamla Kirurgen. This is a drop-in event; You are welcome to drop in later or leave earlier depending on your schedule.

Date and time: 18 September, 12:00-13:30
Location: Student lounge, Gamla Kirurgen
Click here to sign up!

Gendering Gangs: Critical Perspectives on Youth, Masculinities, Violence, and the Gang Ethos in Sweden

Seminar

Contrary to international research on gangs there is remarkably little focus on gendered aspects of contemporary Swedish gangs. This is an opportunity missed. Masculine ideals and homosociality are clearly central to gangs’ self-representation and practices, very much in the same way as in male-dominated far-right milieus.

In most gangsta rap, it takes mere seconds for ideas about “how to be a man” to surface, including explicit notions of women’s roles and purposes. The same applies to social media posts or casual conversations among gang members. However, despite Sweden’s long-established approach to issues of gender and sexuality in both society and academia, there is a lack of research examining gendered underpinnings of the gang ethos that can help us better to understand the reality of Swedish gang crime.  

The aim of this research symposium is to facilitate a dialogue between researchers of both criminal subcultures and gender. Hosted by scholars from the Divisions of Gender, Social Anthropology and Sociology at Lund University, it is part of an effort to stimulate further research into gendered structures and cultural expressions of criminal gangs in Sweden.

Date and time: 17th September 2025, 09:00-15:00
Location: Gamla kirurgen, Room R240, Sandgatan 13, 223 50 Lund
For more information, visit this page

Embodied methods: creative possibilites in research

Workshop

Lund Social Science Methods Center together with Yafa Shanneik invites you to a workshop about creative research methods. We will deep dive into body mapping, which is an arts-based research technique, and explore how full body portraits can be used in data collection.

In this workshop Yafa Shanneik will share her experiences and knowledge about the arts-based research method body mapping and its possibilities using virtual reality (VR). Professor Shannaeik’s research employs a decolonial and participatory framework aimed at understanding the lived experience of displaced communities from the Middle East.

To initiate the session Mikaela Linell, PhD student at the department of sociology, will give a general introduction to body mapping research and its unique composition which allows for exploration of embodied perspectives and insights.

Date and time: 17th September 2025, 13:00 -15:00
Location: Sh107, Gamla köket (School of Social Work), Allhelgona Kyrkogata 8, Lund
For more information, visit this page

Gender, Families, and Wealth Accumulation Among Only Daughters

Lecture

Open lecture with Ye Liu, Reader (Associate Professor) at the Department of International Development, King’s College London, UK.

Prior literature on gender and wealth accumulation largely examines the role of families in reproducing inequalities. However, less attention has been paid to families without sons, a significant demographic, particularly within China’s one-child generation, that challenges conventional understandings of familial wealth dynamics. This study addresses this gap by proposing a new conceptual framework: families as sequential and interconnected sites and agents of wealth accumulation across the life course. It specifically applies this framework to investigate the experiences of siblingless daughters from China’s one-child generation.

Drawing upon 82 individual interviews, this research argues that families are dynamic and sequentially unfolding sites of wealth transfers, acting as both enablers and limiters of women’s wealth accumulation. This perspective reveals how family structures, resources, and roles transform and interact at various life-course stages. The findings demonstrate that siblingless daughters are significant recipients of wealth transfers—including cash, valuables, and property—from multiple givers across key life-course stages such as university education, career entry, and marriage and childbirth. This new conceptualisation not only allows for a deeper examination of persistent patriarchal constraints as they evolve and accumulate across life-course points, but also exposes niche spaces where some women negotiate and potentially subvert these constraints to accumulate wealth. Therefore, this study advances research on gender and wealth by illuminating the complex interplay of familial relationships, resources, and roles across the sequential life course.

Date and time: 17th September 2025, 15:15 -17:00
Location: Asia Library, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Sölvegatan 18 B, Lund
For more information, visit this page

Film Screening: My Five-Year Plan

Film Screening

This film follows three young, unmarried women between 2016-2023, Amber, Jingya and Tingting who in different ways struggle to follow their dreams, their loves, their ambitions. The Chinese state today displays increasing worries about falling nativity at the same time that traditional Chinese family values challenges and constrains many young women in China. During the course of the filming, both Amber and Jingya end up in Europe, looking for different lives. But can life in Europe really fulfill their dreams?

Karin Wegsjö the film director is the author of many short and documentary films. Her films have won prizes both in Sweden and abroad (Guldbagge, Golden Spire Award, Karlov Vary etc). Last year her film “If Everyone Just Leaves” won the Angelos Prize at GIFF and Tempo Documentary Award. My Five Year Plan premiered at the Gothenburg film festival this year and will be screened at Swedish movie theatres in the fall.

After the screening there will be a Q&A with the film director. 

Limited seating available. Reserve a seat and contact Marina Svensson by 15th September.

Date and time: 17 September 2025, 17:15-19:00
Location: Asia Library, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Sölvegatan 18 B, Lund
For more information, visit this page

Development Lunch Seminar: “Women Entrepreneurship, Social Enterprises and Women Empowerment”

Seminar

The Development Research Lunch is a bi-weekly research seminar for all scholars interested in development research, broadly defined. The series is a collaboration between the Development Group at the Department of Economic History at Lund University, and the Development Research School, in turn a collaboration between the Universities of Lund, Gothenburg and Uppsala, and the University of Ghana. 

This week’s seminar “Women Entrepreneurship, Social Enterprises and Women Empowerment” is presented by Abigail Zaato (SD Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development Studies, Ghana).

Date and Time: 18 September 2025 12:00 – 13:00 
Location: Online
For more information, visit this page

Come by with your text! (drop-in)

Student Support

Are you writing a thesis or an essay or something else? Are you unsure of how to quote that chapter or refer to that YouTube video, or what a Works Cited list is supposed to look like? Do you want some tips on how to make your text more academic? Do you have problems finding previous research or using it in your text? Do you have writer’s block? Or do you have any other questions about academic writing, reading, or searching for literature? Come to our drop-in workshop and get help from an academic writing expert and a librarian! You can find us in the computer room SOL:B210 on the second floor of the SOL Library, every Thursday 15–16.

Date and Time: 18 September 2025 (Thursdays) 15:00–16:00
Location: Sol B210, Helgonabacken 12, 223 62 Lund
For more information, visit this page

Morning café conversation on sustainability, music, and climate action with Sam Goldscheider

Seminar

Sam Goldscheider, founder of the non-profit organisation Harmonic Progression visits Malmö Academy of Music for an open conversation about the potential role of music in the green transition.

In collaboration with the Malmö Academy of Music’s Environmental Board (miljönämnden), Sam Goldsheider will share inspiration, ideas, and foster dialogue on this highly relevant theme.  

Date and Time: 22 September 2025, 10.00 – 12.00 (Drop in)
Location: Malmö Academy of Music, Ystadvägen 25, 214 45 Malmö
For more information, visit this page

EUGLOH Sustainable Development Weeks

Webinar Series
The EUGLOH Sustainable Development Weeks is a collaborative campaign that unites the 9 universities of the EUGLOH Alliance. Its goal is to raise awareness and promote action toward a sustainable future, in line with the European Sustainable Development Week.

From 24 September to 15 October 2025, join us for 4 e-conferences that will focus on key Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

These e-conferences will be held every Wednesday from 13:00 to 14:30 (CET) via Zoom webinars. They are open to the public and will feature experts, academics, and student associations from all 9 partner universities.

Conference Schedule:

Wed 15 Oct: SDG 13 – Climate Action
“Act on Climate” – Urgent action to combat climate change and protect our planet.

Wed 24 Sept: SDG 6 – Clean Water & Sanitation
“Water for All” – Ensuring access to clean water and sanitation for everyone.

Wed 1 Oct: SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities & Communities
“Resilient Urbanism” – Building inclusive, safe, and sustainable cities for all.

Wed 8 Oct: SDG 12 – Responsible Consumption & Production
“Responsible Consumption” – Promoting responsible consumption to reduce waste.

Deadline to register: 23 September 2025
Date and time: 24 September 2025 – 15 October 2025 (weekly every Wednesday 13:00 -14:30)
Location: Online
For more information, visit this page

This weekly digest is a collection of news, upcoming events and other opportunities from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University and the wider area, compiled for Graduate School students.

• Seminar: CMES Research Seminars
• Seminar: Preparing the Truth Commission for the Sámi people in Sweden
• Seminar: What language models do and don’t do in studies of political behaviour
• Opportunity: Penta Young Reporters Programme 2025–2027
• Other: Swedish for Immigrants, SFI

CMES Research Seminars

Seminar

The CMES Research Seminar is the main collective seminar at the Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies. LU researchers and invited national and international leading scholars present ongoing research and analyses of a broad range of exciting topics of relevance for the Middle East.
Upcoming events include:

18th September
The Racialization of Syrian Refugees in Jordan and Turkey,
Presentation by Dalia Abdelhady, Sociology, CMES

2nd October
Bringing in the Other Islamists – Comparing Arab Shia and Sunni Islamism(s) in the Middle East.
Presentation by Dalia Abdelhady, Sociology, CMES, on the racialization of Syrian refugees in Jordan and Turkey

Date and time: Thursdays 13.15 – 14.30
Location: CMES Seminar Room, Finngatan 16, 223 62 Lund
For more information, visit this page

Preparing the Truth Commission for the Sámi people in Sweden

Seminar

In this seminar – ”Out of the Ordinary or Business as Usual? Preparing the Truth Commission for the Sámi people in Sweden” – Malin Arvidsson, senior lecturer in Human Rights Studies, will present an article draft (co-authored with Astrid Nonbo Andersen).

This presentation will focus on how the international Truth and Reconciliation Commission model has been imported to the Nordic context. Although the Canadian TRC has been an important source of inspiration in this context, there is a fundamental difference: the Nordic commissions are not the result of a legal settlement, but of political deliberations. In the Nordic countries, claims for historical justice from indigenous groups and minorities have been handled by the established welfare state and been filtered through the state bureaucracy.

Using the theoretical framework ”administrations of memory” (McQuaid & Gensburger 2019; 2023), this article will focus on the role of the Swedish state bureaucracy in handling claims for truth and redress brought forward by indigenous and minority representatives. More particularly, we will trace the policy process leading up to the appointment of the The Swedish Truth Commission for the Sami People.

Date and time: 10 September, 2025 13:15 – 15:00
Location: Room A332 (Blå rummet), LUX, Helgonavägen 3, Lund.
For more information, visit this page‘

AI Lund lunch seminar: What language models do and don’t do in studies of political behaviour

Seminar

This seminar – ”What language models do and don’t do in studies of political behaviour” is presented by Annika Fredén , Associate professor of political science, Lund University and Denitsa Saynova , PhD Candidate computer science, Chalmers University of Technology.

Abstract

A recent trend in social science is to use language models (LMs) such as Chat GPT to mimic human behavior. When the use of similar tools accelerates, it is important to research their foundations to be able to estimate their usability and character when interpreting responses and output from politically oriented questions. We study the usefulness of word embeddings and LMs to detect differences between political parties, including subtleties and jargon and investigate if LMs can replicate results from social science experiments with human subjects. Drawing on results from our recent research, we show that natural language processing of political materials from parties benefit from pre-training on large, general data, rather than specialized data, and that LMs may indicate which social sciences experiments are robust to replication. We allude to a potential distinction between linguistic differences on the one hand, and oppositional differences on the other, when interpreting the performance of language models and their relevance for the social sciences.

Date and time: 10 September, 2025 12:00 – 13:00
Location: Online – link by registration
For more information, visit this page

Penta Young Reporters Programme 2025–2027

Opportunities

The Penta Young Reporters (YRs) Programme seeks to democratise science by making HIV-focused research more accessible and understandable to the communities most affected by paediatric and adolescent infectious diseases – empowering them to engage, question, and lead the conversation. Launched in 2022, the first edition of the project successfully trained six Young Reporters, equipping them to become skilled science communicators.

This project is led by the Fondazione Penta ETS, an organisation working paediatric health research. With a long-standing commitment to improving the lives of children, adolescents, and pregnant people affected by infectious diseases, Penta has been at the forefront of involving young people in research in meaningful, impactful ways. At the heart of this effort is a powerful mission: to share science in ways that are inclusive, understandable, and youth-driven.

YRs programme equips young people with the tools to become trusted science communicators. Through mentorship, media literacy training, expert interviews, and hands-on experience, you’ll learn to break down complex health topics – especially around HIV research and treatment-into content that resonates with youth around the world.

This new edition will train a new group of Young Reporters to:

• Create social media, video, podcast, and article content on HIV research
• Interview leading HIV researchers
• Promote mental health and tackle stigma
• Combat health misinformation
• Attend and report from global conferences
• Explore career paths in journalism, science communication, and public health Programme Timeline

Programme Timeline

• Duration of the project: 18 months
• Recruitment Period: September-October 2025
• Selection, Preparation and Coordination: November-December 2025
• Programme Implementation (training, meetings, events, content creation): January 2026 – January 2027
• Closing & Evaluation: February 2027

Who can join?

Students aged 18-25 with:

• A strong interest in HIV, public health, research and social impact
• At least 12 hours per month of time to dedicate to the program
• Fluent English for learning and collaboration
• Experience using social or digital media for communication
• No prior science or journalism experience is required!

Application Deadline: 28th September 2025, 23:59 CET
Location: Online
Click here to apply
For more information, visit this page

Swedish for immigrants, SFI Lund

Learning

The Swedish for Immigrants course is a qualified language course that gives you basic knowledge of the Swedish language. You learn to speak, read and write in Swedish and get to practice using the language in everyday and working life. After completing the course, you will receive a grade. All tuition is free.

Application Eligibility:

• You must have a personal identity number be registered in the municipality of Lund
• You lack basic knowledge of the Swedish language
• If you are an EU or ESS citizen without a Swedish personal identity number and want to study Swedish for immigrants (SFI) in Lund Municipality, you must first apply for the right to study SFI

Application Deadline: None
For more information, visit this page

This weekly digest is a collection of news, upcoming events and other opportunities from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University and the wider area, compiled by Graduate School students.

• Fragmented Power : The Reception of China’s Foreign Policy Strategies in Sri Lanka
• EU Days Lund
• In the MOOD for Climate Action
• SASNET Travel Grants & Best South Asia Thesis Award

Fragmented Power : The Reception of China’s Foreign Policy Strategies in Sri Lanka

PhD Thesis Defense

Author: Tabita Rosendal Ebbesen

Summary, in English

This dissertation proposes a theory concerning China’s “Fragmented Power” in its foreign policy pursuits by analyzing the reception of the “Belt and Road” Initiative in Sri Lanka. The initiative has sparked intense debates and counteractions on the global stage and has become synonymous with Xi Jinping’s assertive approach to foreign policy. However, many aspects of the initiative’s goals, implementation, and host country reception have remained underexplored in the academic literature. Through four interrelated and mutually complementary articles, as well as an introductory chapter that ties these efforts together, this dissertation offers novel insights into China’s multifaceted foreign policy strategies, actors, practices, and the perceptions of these engagements among Sri Lankans across various societal strata.

Article 1 examines China’s utilization of Buddhist strategic narratives to facilitate the smooth implementation of the “Belt and Road” Initiative in Sri Lanka, a Buddhist-majority country. Article 2 dives into the case of the Hambantota International Port project, where the interests and efforts of the Chinese Communist Party, Chinese state-owned enterprises, and the Sri Lankan government have converged and diverged in manifold ways. Article 3 illuminates the reception of China’s political and economic efforts among Sri Lankans against the backdrop of regional great power competition, highlighting the limitations of China’s current strategy. Finally, article 4 analyzes the increased party-to-party relations between the Chinese Communist Party and various Sri Lankan parties, including China’s role as a regional “Authoritarian Gravity Center.”

Together, the dissertation contributes to several important, emerging bodies of scholarship on the linkages between Chinese domestic and foreign policy practices, including the adverse effects that this decentralization can bring, China’s increasing use of religious and party diplomacy, the strategic use of narratives, and the importance of contextualized, “bottom-up” analyses showcasing local voices. Consequently, the dissertation also highlights the permeability of China’s international engagements and presence – which can be referred to as “Global China” – by presenting insights on host country agency in the face of its “Fragmented Power.”

Date and time: 3 June 2025 13:00 to 15:00
Location: LUX C121, Helgonavägen 3, 223 62 Lund
For more information, visit this page

EU Days Lund

Forum

EU Days Lund is the main Swedish annual EU forum gathering around 500 Swedish and international high-level speakers and participants.

On September 23–24, 2025, EU Days Lund will be held for the fifth time. It is the leading national arena for discussing EU-related issues. This year’s edition will focus on Sweden’s 30-year membership in the EU, the 25th anniversary of the Öresund Bridge, and highly relevant topics such as:

Europe in the world and EU enlargement

• a new plan for Europe’s sustainable prosperity
• a clean industrial future
• a thriving and competitive EU
• a new era for EU defense and security

Date and time: 23-24 September 2025
Location: The City Hall, Stortorget (9 minutes walk from Lund Central Station)
For more information, visit this page

In the MOOD for Climate Action

Opportunities

The Learning Planet Institute is launching its first Meaningful Open Opportunities for Discovery (MOOD) « In the MOOD for Climate Action » on June 9th. Focusing on climate change and sustainability, this 4-week climate fully funded pilot programme gives students the opportunity to tackle global challenges through real-world projects, and learning socio-emotional skills. Applications are now open.

The Learning Planet Institute is committed to help students better understand and face societal challenges in a rapidly changing world by using scalable experiential learning approaches. MOOD is one of them. Created by the Institute, as part of a United Nations University Hub for youth education, MOODs are immersive, certified learning journeys where students aged 18-25 explore their purpose while tackling global challenges through real-world projects, and learning socio-emotional skills. Through simulations and reflection, students explore their own values and purpose, learning to balance their personal needs with real-world problems.

« In the MOOD for Climate Action » is the first pilot, focusing on climate change and sustainability. Through this learning journey, the participants will : 

• Gain clarity on your values and purpose while taking effective climate action
• Learn more on climate and sustainability
• Work in teams with peers from around the world
• Earn a university-level certificate
• Develop both systems thinking skills and personal confidence
• Join a global network of changemakers

Who can join?

Students aged 18-25 with:

• Stable internet connection for 2-3 hour video conferences
• At least 9 hours per week of time to dedicate to the program
• Fluent English for learning and collaboration
• Curiosity about climate action and personal growth

Date and time: June 9th – July 7th, 2025
Location: Online with live sessions
For more information, visit this page

SASNET Travel Grants & Best South Asia Thesis Award

Travel Grants and Thesis Award

SASNET is opening for travel grants and thesis award as follows:

1. SASNET Travel Grants for Master Students at LU – New! South Asia Travel Grant for Master Students | Swedish South Asian Studies Network
2. SASNET Travel Grants for Doctoral Students at LU South Asia Travel Grant for Doctoral Students | Swedish South Asian Studies Network
3. Best South Asia Thesis Award 2024/2025 Best South Asia Thesis Award 2024/2025 | Swedish South Asian Studies Network

This weekly digest is a collection of news, upcoming events and other opportunities from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University and the wider area, compiled by Graduate School students.

• AI Lund lunch seminar: Beyond AI Ethics Frameworks – Ethical Considerations and Responsibility in Public Sector AI
• The Higher Research Seminar: Michael Bruter, London School of Economics and Political Science – ‘Democracy and the Intergenerational Challenge’
• CMES Seminar: Research Results from MECW-Project “Beyond Sacred/Secular Cities”

AI Lund lunch seminar: Beyond AI Ethics Frameworks – Ethical Considerations and Responsibility in Public Sector AI

Seminar

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly embedded in public sector services—from welfare agencies to higher education—there is growing concern about how to ensure these systems are developed and used responsibly (Dignum, 2019). Much of the focus to date has been on producing ethics frameworks and high-level principles such as transparency, fairness, and accountability. But what happens when these principles meet the realities of day-to-day work in the public sector?

In this talk, Clàudia Figueras Julián present her findings from her PhD research, which investigates how stakeholders in Swedish public organisations—such as developers, project managers, and educators—talk about and make sense of ethics and responsibility in their work with AI systems. Drawing on qualitative case studies, she explores how practitioners interpret ethical principles, the tensions they encounter when trying to apply them, and how responsibility is negotiated across technical, organisational, and emotional dimensions.

Date and time: 28 May 2025 12:00 to 13:00 
Location: Online. Link by registration. 
For more information, visit this page

The Higher Research Seminar: Michael Bruter, London School of Economics and Political Science – ‘Democracy and the Intergenerational Challenge’

Seminar

The Higher Research Seminar is the main collective seminar of the Department. The research staff and invited national and international leading scholars present ongoing research and analyses of a broad range of exciting topics of relevance for Political Science.

Presenter: Michael Bruter, London School of Economics and Political Science
Convenors: Professor Annika Björkdahl and Professor Fariborz Zelli.

Date and time: 28 May 2025 13:15 to 14:30
Location: Large conference room, Eden 367, Lund
For more information, visit this page

CMES Seminar: Research Results from MECW-Project “Beyond Sacred/Secular Cities”

Seminar

Concluding seminar with Torsten Janson, Jayne Svenungsson, Mattias Kjärrholm, Barbara Törnquist-Plewa, on research results from the MECW-project Beyond Sacred/Secular Cities: Exploring Politics of Memory, Space, and Religion in Middle Eastern Nationalisms.

Date and time: 2 June 2025 13:15 to 14:30
Location: CMES, Finngatan 16, Lund
For more information, visit this page

This weekly digest is a collection of news, upcoming events and other opportunities from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University and the wider area, compiled by Graduate School students.

• Research Seminars on Multilevel Orders of Corruption in Central Asia
• CMES Public Talk with Göran Rosenberg: “Whither Israel”
• UPF Career Talk: From Operations to Negotiations
• What does student activism mean today? A case study from Spain
• Visual Methods in the Social Sciences
• Development Lunch Seminar: Exploring Collaborative Governance Frameworks in Complex Cross-Sector Collaborations in Africa
• Local traditional knowledge for global governance: solutions for the multi-crisis of climate, water, biodiversity, health and food

CMES Public Talk with Göran Rosenberg: “Whither Israel”

Lecture

Welcome to a public CMES talk with Göran Rosenberg on the future of Israel – in conversation with Lisa Strömbom, Department of Political Science.

Göran Rosenberg is a renowned Swedish writer and journalist, recipient of the 2012 August Prize for A Brief Stop on the Road from Auschwitz. His most recent book Another Judaism. Another Zionism. The Unrequited Love of Marcus Ehrenpreis (2021) explores early 20th-century Jewish thought and identity. His book Israel, a Personal History will be published in October 2025. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Gothenburg and has received numerous awards for his literary and biographical work.

Moderator:  Karin Aggestam, Professor in Political Science, Lund University

This event is a collaboration with Lund Association of Foreign Affairs.

All welcome! 

Date and time: 21 May 2025, 18:00-19:30  
Location: Eden Auditorium (Allhelgona kyrkogata 14, Lund)
For more information, visit this page

UPF Career Talk: From Operations to Negotiations

Multilateralism, Diplomacy, and the Security Sector

Interested in international security, defence diplomacy, and multilateral cooperation?
Join us for a Career Talk with Commander Tyson Nicholas, Strategic Military Advisor at UN Women, as he shares insights from his work in global peacekeeping, UN operations, and gender-responsive security policy-driven by a strong commitment to advancing inclusive and effective international peace and security

Our (joining online) Guest Speaker: Commander Tyson Nicholas is Strategic Military Advisor at UN Women, seconded from the Australian Defence Force. With over 26 years of experience, he has led international peacekeeping, defence diplomacy, and security operations. He is an alumnus of the Master of Laws in International Human Rights Law at Lund University.

CAREER TALKS is a series of events by UPF Lund’s Career Committee, offering students insights into career paths, experiences, and networking opportunities in fields related to international relations. Come learn from inspiring professionals and explore your future!

Free fika and entrance for members
40 SEK for non-members

Date and time: 22 May 2025,16:45 – 18:00
Location: GAMLA KÖKET 128
For more information, please contact: career@upflund.se

What does student activism mean today? A case study from Spain

Seminar

The inauguration of a special series in public philosophy at Lund University

You are cordially invited to the inauguration of a series in public philosophy dedicated to topical (and sometimes controversial) questions. In our current era of polarization, terms such as student activism often hold multiple and contested meanings. What would happen if we were to invite discourse on both sides of the debate? 

Audience participation and engagement (as well as decorum and politeness) are expected and encouraged. 

Host: Melina Tsapos, Phd Candidate, Department of Philosoph,y Lund University

Guest: Jordan Spencer Jacobs, Visiting Researcher, Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, Lund University

Respondent: Professor Erik J. Olsson, Department of Philosophy, Lund University

Date and time: 22 May 2025, 17:15 -18:30 
Location: LUX B 237 and online (upon request)
For more information, visit this page

Visual Methods in the Social Sciences

Workshop

The Lund Social Science Methods Centre invites you to a workshop on visual methods with keynote Nicole Milman-Doerr, Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen, where she is the director of CoMMonS Research Center for Studies of Political Mobilisation and Social Movements at the Department of Sociology.

Drawing on interdisciplinary theories and visual qualitative and computational methods in visual and cultural studies, media and digital communication, narrative, gender studies, and discourse analysis, this workshop will critically investigate how images are constructed and spread in digital publics and news media, among policy makers and in globalized arenas of affective politics, violent conflict, and protest. Strategies of visual persuasion, visual storytelling, and the transformative ‘power of images’ have been studied by media theorists, art historians and by empirical analysts of gender, culture, media, discourse and transnational social movements. We discuss how journalists, bloggers, artists, indigenous and BIPoC activists or non-profit organizations and gender theorists try to challenge autocratic images and stigmatizing representations, and we investigate how cultural codes, familiar stories and specific stereotypes shape the boundaries of democracy and public participation. This workshop is fairly empirical and based on international collaborative projects with theorists of art, computer vision and qualitative methods.

No registration is needed for this workshop. Everyone is welcome (inside and outside the University)

Date and time: 22 May 2025, 10:00 – 12:00
Location: Sh107, Gamla köket (School of Social Work), Allhelgona Kyrkogata 8, Lund
For more information, visit this page

Development Lunch Seminar: Exploring Collaborative Governance Frameworks in Complex Cross-Sector Collaborations in Africa

Seminar

Welcome to a Development Lunch Seminar with Sadiq Gulma (Malmö University).

“Exploring Collaborative Governance Frameworks in Complex Cross-Sector Collaborations in Africa”

Read more about Sadiq Gulma’s research here.

About the Development Lunch Seminars

The Development Research Lunch is a bi-weekly research seminar for all scholars interested in development research, broadly defined. The series is a collaboration between the Development Group at the Department of Economic History at Lund University, and the Development Research School, in turn a collaboration between the Universities of Lund, Gothenburg and Uppsala, and the University of Ghana. The seminar series encourages both junior and senior scholars to present, from a wide range of disciplines.

This is an online (Zoom) event. To attend, please register here before the seminar starts.

Date and time: 22 May 2025, 12:00 – 13:00
Location: Online (Zoom)
For more information, visit this page

Local traditional knowledge for global governance: solutions for the multi-crisis of climate, water, biodiversity, health and food

Seminar

On May 23, LUCSUS hosts a seminar by a Colombian visiting professor, Martha Isabel Gómez Lee. She will give a public presentation on how local traditional knowledge can address the interconnected global crises.

Local traditional knowledge for global governance

Solutions for the multi-crisis of climate, water, biodiversity, health and food

This presentation explores how local traditional knowledge can contribute to addressing the interconnected global crises—climate change, biodiversity loss, water insecurity, health, and food systems—termed the “multicrisis.” Drawing on interdisciplinary research and personal experience, Martha Isabel Gómez Lee argues that Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) offer vital, place-based knowledge systems that global governance must engage with more equitably. The talk identifies three foundational conditions for integrating traditional knowledge into international policy: ending biocolonialism, recognising Indigenous future temporalities, and promoting Traditional Knowledge Diplomacy (TKD). Through examples from Latin America, particularly the Andean region and organisations like FILAC, the presentation highlights how IPLCs’ lived, cyclical conceptions of time and diplomacy rooted in ancestral wisdom can shape resilient, inclusive global solutions. Ultimately, the presentation calls for a transformative shift in policy frameworks to ensure traditional knowledge is not only protected but also actively influences sustainable development pathways.

Date and time: 23 May 2025, 10:00 – 12:00
Location: Ostrom, Josephson building, Biskopsgatan 5, Lund
For more information, visit this page

This weekly digest is a collection of news, upcoming events and other opportunities from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University and the wider area, compiled by Graduate School students.

• Witnessing genocide: Experience of Nazi Concentration Camps: Visit of UB’s Ravensbrück Archives
• Changing spatialities and agency at Myanmar’s highest borderlands
• The centrality of the margins: Borderlands, illicit economies and uneven development
• How can we together safeguard democracy?
• Bridging East and West – Moldova on the path to the EU

Changing spatialities and agency at Myanmar’s highest borderlands

Open lecture with Karin Dean, senior researcher, Tallinn University

Myanmar’s highest borderlands are defined by naturally connected but politically and geopolitically dissected vast mountainous spaces of the eastern Himalayas around the tri-junction of China, Myanmar and India. Their sweeping extent, but more so the politics and challenges of access allow us to produce knowledge of these places and their societies in tiny bits. The presentation provides a glimpse of the changing socio-political dynamics at the borderlands between Arunachal Pradesh and Kachin State through two key themes. One is the effects of space on theories and local actions, interactions and developments. The other is the community, livelihood and wider cultural resilience at and across Myanmar’s highest borderlands.

Karin Dean is a senior researcher at Tallinn University’s School of Humanities, trained in political geography. She currently heads the Eur-Asian Border Lab (https://borderlab.eu/), an active platform to foster trans-regional dialogue in border studies. Karin’s research interest revolves around borders—on how different actors construct, negotiate and cross physical, symbolic or virtual borders in their claiming of political space. Most of her research has focused on the contested spatialities at Myanmar’s borderlands and the Kachin connectivities across China and Myanmar, while most recently she has extended her research to the Indian ‘side’ at Arunachal Pradesh-Myanmar borderlands

Date and time: 13 May 2025, 15:15-17:00 
Location: Asia Library, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Sölvegatan 18 B, Lund
For more information, visit this page

The centrality of the margins: Borderlands, illicit economies and uneven development

Open lecture with Patrick Meehan, University of Manchester

‘Bringing development’ to ‘peripheral’ borderland regions has become a powerful trope in development policy across South and Southeast Asia, evident in strategies like India’s Look East policy and China’s Belt and Road Initiative. This approach exemplifies what David Harvey critically terms a “diffusionist narrative”, in which regions marked by violence, poverty, and illegality are framed as marginal spaces left behind by the uneven diffusion of capitalism and state institutions. Development, in this narrative, is equated with integrating ‘lagging regions’ into states and markets. This talk challenges that logic. Focusing on Myanmar’s borderlands with China, it explores how the persistence of poverty, violence, and illegality is a consequence of how this region has been integrated into national, regional, and global political economies, rather than a ‘lack of’ integration. Two broader themes frame this analysis. First, the ‘centrality of the margins’ rethinks borderlands as active sites shaping state power and capitalism, rather than passive zones awaiting intervention. Second, drawing on the literature on combined and uneven development, this talk explores how maintaining borderlands as zones of illegality and liminality can benefit political and economic elites and drive development in metropolitan centres, but in ways that further marginalise borderland populations. By exploring the drug trade and rare earth mining, this talk shows how poverty, violence, and illegality are not merely residual effects of conflict, state failure, and economic marginalisation, but are embedded in the DNA of state formation and capitalism in Myanmar’s borderlands, and in the spatially uneven dynamics of accumulation, precarity, and development across East and Southeast Asia.

Dr. Patrick Meehan is a Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies in the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute at the University of Manchester. His research addresses issues of violence, conflict and development. His work focuses particularly on Myanmar and the borderland and frontier regions of Southeast Asia, where he has conducted research for more than a decade.

Date and time: 14 May 2025, 13:15-14:45
Location: Asia Library, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Sölvegatan 18 B, Lund
For more information, visit this page

How can we together safeguard democracy?

Seminar

On 15 May 2025, the University invites you to a conversation about activism, education and censorship. The importance of communicating research at a time when many people with different knowledge claims are competing for the public’s attention.

Together with Lars Mogensen, invited guests will discuss ways in and out of academia and how the university can safeguard a democratic society based on the following questions:

• Activism, actors and agendas – a question of roles and responsibilities?
• Education, libraries and pictures – in conflict or in line with education?
• Censorship, cancellation and critigue – who is listened to and why?

For whom: employees, students, and anyone interested.

Register for the seminar by filling in your email address at the bottom of the registration page: How can we protect democracy together?

Participants: Anette Novak, Anna Jonsson, Bodil Jönsson, Carl Cederström, Eugenia Perez-Vico, Farshid Jalalvand, Hedvig Ljungar, Jenny Björkman, Jimmie Kristensson, Joakim Lyth, Magnus Thure Nilsson, Mikael Jonsson, Moa Berglöf, Olof Sundin, Rebecca Selberg and Sten Widmalm

Moderator: Lars Mogensen. 

Date and time: 15 May 2025, 15–18,
Location: Skissernas Museum, Lund.
For more information, visit this page

Bridging East and West – Moldova on the path to the EU

Penal Discussion

On 25 June 2024, the EU held its first accession conference with Moldova, formally opening the membership negotiations. However, Moldova’s aspirations have been complicated by geopolitical challenges. The ongoing war in Ukraine has put Moldova under immense pressure, particularly from wide Russian-backed disinformation campaigns aimed at undermining Moldova’s European ambitions – notably during the last presidential elections of November 2024. Moldova also tackles a significant number of other challenges, such as large numbers of refugees, inflation, threats to its energy supplies and violations of its airspace.Despite all this Moldova has already started the process of integrating to fulfill its commitments to one day be a part of the European Union.Welcome to a panel discussion that will discuss opportunities and well as challenges to Moldova´s EU integration.

The seminar is arranged by Europe Direct Lund and Malmö University.

Registration closes by: May 19 2025 at 12:00 AM (Registration is required as drinks and a snack will be offered)

Date and time: 20 May 2025, 18:00 – 19:45
Location: Malmö stadsbibliotek, Röda rummet.
For more information, visit this page

This weekly digest is a collection of news, upcoming events and other opportunities from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University and the wider area, compiled by Graduate School students.

• Sustainability Week 2025
• UPF Career Talk. International Human Right Careers: Gender Equality, Development & Local Impact
• SASNET Book Talk with Rhys Machold: “Fabricating Homeland Security: Police Entanglements across India and Palestine/Israel”
• Defending Livelihoods in the Speculative City: The Politics of Class and Solidarity for Tenant Shopkeepers in Urban Korea
• Girls Sc(AI)ence 2: Pushing boundaries of research design: Future Making through (re)mixing creative methods
• A New Look at an Old War: Examining Burma’s Long Running Civil Wars
• Transformation Food System: Rights, Land, and Justice

International Human Right Careers: Gender Equality, Development & Local Impact

UPF Career Talk

Interested in human rights, gender equality, anti-corruption, and international development? Join us for an engaging Career Talk as Isis Sartori Reis shares her journey from Lund to global institutions like the UNDP and the European Commission, offering insights on navigating a career in human rights and development!

Our guest speaker:
Isis Sartori Reis is a human rights professional specialising in gender mainstreaming, anti-corruption, and local-level capacity development. She holds a Master’s in Asian Studies from Lund University and has worked with the UNDP, the European Commission, and currently serves as Programme Officer at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Lund.

CAREER TALKS is a series of events by UPF Lund’s Career Committee, offering students insights into career paths, experiences, and networking opportunities in fields related to international relations. Come learn from inspiring professionals and explore your future!

☕ Free fika and entrance for members
40 SEK for non-members

Date and time: 6 May 17:15 to 18:30
Location: Eden ED 222A,, Lund
For more information, visit this page

SASNET Book Talk with Rhys Machold: “Fabricating Homeland Security: Police Entanglements across India and Palestine/Israel”

Seminar

Welcome to a book talk with Dr. Rhys Machold (University of Glasgow) on homeland security and efforts to reproduce it as new state form of policing around the world.

When we hear ‘homeland security,’ we often think about the aftermath of September 11th and the dramatic consolidation of domestic mass surveillance in the United States. Less well-known are the term’s origins and the subsequent efforts to reproduce it as new state form and “model” of policing around the world. Tracing homeland security’s origins in the colonization of Palestine and subsequent efforts by Israel’s homeland security industry to ‘penetrate’ India in the course of the ‘war on terror’, Fabricating Homeland Security locates homeland security as a universalizing transnational project of contemporary capitalism and empire, staged through ongoing practices and encounters across time and space. 

This book tells this story by weaving together fragments gathered through more than a decade of ethnographic research across Palestine/Israel, India and the UK. It traces the political fallout of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, often known as “India’s 9/11” or simply “26/11”, concentrating on the efforts of Israel’s homeland security to advise and equip Indian city and state governments. By charting homeland security’s less known histories and geographies, the book raises urgent political questions about the actually existing extent of security’s self-implied universality and inevitability, even in places and societies deeply imbricated in empire and capitalist social relations.

Date and time: 5 May 2025 13:15
Location: CMES Seminar Room (Finngatan 16), Lund
For more information, visit this page

Defending Livelihoods in the Speculative City: The Politics of Class and Solidarity for Tenant Shopkeepers in Urban Korea

Open lecture with Yewon Lee, Department of Korean Studies at University of Tübingen

Tenant shopkeepers are micro-entrepreneurs or petit bourgeoisie that are often dismissively labeled as unrevolutionary, reactionary, and individualistic. Scholarly literature contributes to this invisibility. However, tenant shopkeepers in urban Korea are collectively organizing against the trend where urban spaces they depend on to eke out a living being captured as an investment commodity and resulting in their rent hikes and evictions. My in-depth ethnographic research in the larger metropolitan area of Seoul analyzes how once fragmented tenant shopkeepers come to embrace class politics to align their interest with various precariats of the city while demanding recognition of the value created through their “work.” As speculation on urban real estates are intensifying all around the increasingly urbanizing world, there is much to be gained from exploring and evaluating this South Korea’s case of building what scholars have coined as “cities for people, not for profit.” More broadly, through the case of tenant shopkeepers organizing, I investigate the path to generate new class politics for the previously fragmented.

Yewon Lee (She/Her) is a Junior Professor at the Department of Korean Studies at University of Tübingen. She is a political and labor sociologist and urban ethnographer whose work has been centered on unraveling how speculative real estate interests increasingly dictate the shape and character of urban landscapes and urban (work) lives. 

Date and time: 7 May 2025 15:15 to 17:00
Location: Asia Library, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Sölvegatan 18 B, Lund
For more information, visit this page

Girls Sc(AI)ence 2: Pushing boundaries of research design: Future Making through (re)mixing creative methods

Workshop

An online lecture and on-site seminar in the serie Girls Just Want To Have Sc(AI)ence. Topic: Pushing boundaries of research design: Future Making through (re)mixing creative methods.
Invited speaker: Annette Markham, Chair Professor of Media Literacy and Public Engagement in the department of Media and Culture at Utrecht University, Netherland

Read more about the  workshop series “Girls just want to have Sc(AI)ence” at ai.lu.se

Programme:
10.00 – 10.45: Keynote by Annette Markham Pushing boundaries of research design: Future Making through (re)mixing creative methods

Abstract: How can we create methodological mindsets and sensibilities that give rise to alternate futures? How can critical perspectives, reflexivity, creativity, and data science co-mingle? In this talk and workshop, Professor Markham focuses on how to dismantle and then reconfigure disciplinary traditions for research design. The mindset of remix is one way to consider how methods are not just tools, but make worlds. This talk encourages researchers to reflect on how all scientific practices embody fundamentally playful, inventive, and generative forms of interrogation and embracing less restrictive frameworks for engagement and analysis can form novel pathways through wicked polycrisis. To build the case for pushing boundaries, Markham draws on her work conducting algorithmic literacy through arts-based community engagement as well as her work conducting close level sociological analysis of human-AI interactions.

Date and time: 8 May 2025 10:00 to12:30
Location: Hybrid, Zoom & Lund
For more information, visit this page

A New Look at an Old War: Examining Burma’s Long Running Civil Wars

Seminar

Burma’s conflict holds the distinction of being among the world’s longest civil wars – dating back to 1948. This multimedia public roundtable considers new perspectives for understanding the longevity of Myanmar’s civil wars by looking at the roles of militias, drugs, and human rights abuses against civilians through historical, feminist and cinematographic perspectives.

The seminar features footage from Adrian Cowell’s The Warlords – a documentary film shot in Shan State in the early 1970s to highlight the continuity of the roles played by militias and drugs across over fifty years of armed conflict from an on the ground perspective. The panelists will examine the Burmese military’s use of its militia system as part of larger strategy for managing conflict and discuss shortcomings of scholarly and practical interventions which focus too narrowly on armed actors and governance solutions, ignoring local contexts and longstanding grievances and potentially replicating harms.

Panelists include scholars and practitioners: 

• Dr John Buchanan is a Researcher at Tallinn University and focuses on politics in Southeast Asia
• Melissa Booth, independent researcher on security and justice reform and gender and conflict
• Dr Jenny Hedström, associate professor of war studies at the Swedish Defence University
• Dr Patrick Meehan, Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies, Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HRCI), University of Manchester; 

Moderator: Dr Elizabeth Rhoads, Human Rights Profile Area member and researcher at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies at Lund University

Date and time: 12 May 2025 17:15 to 19:00
Location: Asia Library, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Sölvegatan 18 B
For more information, visit this page

Transformation Food System: Rights, Land, and Justice

Lecture

📖 This lecture explores food and land as fundamental human rights, challenging their treatment as commodities. We examine how corporate control, land grabs, and toxic trade practices threaten food sovereignty, biodiversity, and local farming communities—especially in the Global South—and discuss pathways toward just, sustainable food systems rooted in human dignity and ecological care 🌱🌍

Gloria Jimwaga is a Policy Advisor on Food and Land Rights at AfrikaGrupperna, with over 11 years of experience in land tenure, food rights, and climate justice. She holds degrees from SLU and the University of Dar es Salaam and is passionate about women’s land rights and sustainable development systems.

☕ Free fika
70 SEK for non-members

Date and time: 12 May 2025, 17:30 – 18:30
Location: Gamla Köket 128, Allhelgona kyrkogata 8, Lund, Sweden
For more information, visit this page

This weekly digest is a collection of news, upcoming events and other opportunities from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University and the wider area, compiled by Graduate School students.

• Global Policy, Diplomacy, and Sustainability (GPODS) Fellowship
• Acts of balance: The dual emotion work of legal professionals in Danish rape trials
• Last April and 1st May celebrations 2025
• Sustainability Week 2025

Global Policy, Diplomacy, and Sustainability (GPODS) Fellowship

3-month online programme (fees apply, up to 60% scholarship for early bird registration)

Global Policy, Diplomacy, and Sustainability (GPODS) Fellowship, a prestigious 3-month online program designed to empower students, young professionals, and scholars to advance their careers in the fields of public policy, diplomacy, and sustainability.

At GPODS, we are committed to providing a holistic career upgrade for our Fellows, helping them gain access to top-tier graduate programs and invaluable career opportunities. Our Fellows benefit from a comprehensive approach that not only enhances their academic knowledge but also prepares them for impactful careers. Below are some of the key ways in which GPODS supports its fellows:

1. Mentorship and networks: Our Mentors are members of NATO, the UN, various national ministries, diplomats, and executives from Fortune 500 companies and multilateral organizations – all world leaders come in as mentors. 

2. Knowledge: From 3 courses of 20 hours each benchmarked with the best courses from Ivy League Universities and taught by people (profs and alumni) from Cornell, Stanford, Cambridge, etc.

3. Skills: As per our stakeholder interviews at the World Economic Forum at Davos last year we developed a battery of cross-cutting skill-building workshops on Policy Writing and Communications, Systems Thinking, Case Studies in Public Policy, Behavioral Economics, and Fundraising.

4. Speaking opportunities: We give our fellows many speaking opportunities where they participate as panelists in the GPODS International Ideation Summit and other organizations that we have collaborated with such as UN-Habitat, New York Climate Week, European Geological Association, International Dialogue on Migration, the Indian Forum for Public Diplomacy, etc. We see this as a great opportunity for learning by doing for the Fellows.

See more…

Early Bird Application Deadline: 30 April 2025
Location: Online
For more information, visit this page
Register here

Acts of balance: The dual emotion work of legal professionals in Danish rape trials

Brown Bag Seminar on Ongoing Research

Speaker: Louise Høyer Bom

The department’s lunch seminar series is an informal arena for our own researchers to present and discuss research ideas and findings. Each presenter talks for about half an hour, followed by a discusson. Feel free to bring your lunch!

This is our research-in-progress seminar series (in Swedish: Forskning på gång) where the department’s own researchers present their ongoing research.

We especially invite staff and master’s students of the Department of Sociology. If you are not a student or member of staff and would like to attend the event please email one of the contact persons no later than 48 hours before the start of the seminar to inquire about available places.

Date and time: 1 April 2025 12:05 to 13:00 
Location: The Department of Sociology in Lund, Gamla lungkliniken (House G).
For more information, visit this page

Last April and 1st May celebrations 2025

Various Events

Join us for a festive series of spring celebrations in Lundagård, featuring a variety of cherished traditions and events!

From April 30 to May 1, enjoy the Hat Parade, the lively Rector’s Court, and Lund’s Student Singers welcoming spring with song. These events include inspiring speeches, music, and community spirit, marking the arrival of spring in true Lund University tradition.

Don’t miss this opportunity to celebrate together with students, faculty, and the Lund community in the heart of the city!

Date and time: 30 April – 1 May 2025
Location: Lund
For more information, visit this page

Sustainability Week 2025

This year’s programme consists of over 80 events – open to all and free of charge!

5-10 of May the Sustainability Week will be back!

Sustainability Week is an annual event where Lund University and Lund Municipality organise a week full with activities focusing on sustainability. During the week, both current societal challenges and hopeful visions of the future are explored in the form of lectures, workshops, debates, exhibitions and guided tours.

All events are organised by staff at LU and Lund Municipality, and student organisations at LU. Most events take place around Lund and the surrounding area, and this year events will also be organised at Campus Helsingborg and at the Malmö Academy of Music.

You find the programme at hallbarhetsveckan.event.lu.se
You find all the English speaking events here | hallbarhetsveckan.event.lu.se/calendar

Date and time: 5 May 2025 08:00 to 10 May 2025 17:00
Location: Lund
For more information, visit this page

This weekly digest is a collection of news, upcoming events and other opportunities from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University and the wider area, compiled by Graduate School students.

• Africa’s Last Colony
• Innovation Research Day
• Walking the lines – Reflections on walking methods in Jordan
• CMES Seminar: “Shattered Landscapes: An Agonistic Approach to Ethnography in Palestine and Israel”
• Spring Choir Concert with the Music Teachers’ Choir

Africa’s Last Colony

Film screening & panel discussion

Welcome to a film screening of Haiyu – Rebel Singer Mariem Hassan and the Struggle for Free Western Sahara, followed by a panel discussion with the film’s producer and Lund University researchers. The event is free of charge and open to the public.

Filmed in the Western Sahara refugee camp in Algeria, the documentary Haiyu – Rebel Singer Mariem Hassan and the Struggle for Free Western Sahara is about Africa’s last remaining colony and the role of Mariem Hassan’s music and songs in the struggle for the Western Sahara’s right to self-determination. This event will include a screening of Haiyu, a Q&A with one of the film’s producers, Mohamedsalem Werad, and a panel discussion on the broader situation in West Sahara with Yahia Mahmoud, associate professor in Human Geography, and Maria Padrón Hernández, researcher in Social Anthropology.

This event is organised by the Critical Studies Research Node at the Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund university, in collaboration with Lund Academics for Palestine and Solidarity Rising.

Date and time: 22 April 2025 17:00 to 19:00
Location: LUX C121, Helgonavägen 3 in Lund
For more information, visit this page

Innovation Research Day

Conference

It is once again time for the Innovation Research Day. Last year was the first time this event was held, and it led to interesting discussions and new links between researchers from different disciplines.

The Innovation Research Day provides a platform to share and discuss new projects and initiatives, to identify potential interfaces and complementarities, and to jointly carve out ideas about the future of innovation research at Lund University.

The objective of the 2025 Innovation Research Day is to follow up on the Lund Declaration 2004, which claimed societal challenges into research and innovation policies. 

Innovation research has increasingly been focused on innovation’s role, potential, and limitations in addressing societal challenges and necessary governance reforms. The Draghi report 2024 highlights innovation’s importance for sustainable growth, wellbeing, and competitiveness in Europe, while the Swedish Research Bill emphasizes innovation’s role in solving societal challenges.

In the wake of these societal calls and hopes for innovation, the participants will discuss the future avenues for innovation research, and its interlinkages to sustainability research. 

Date and time: 23 april 2025 09:00 to 14:00 
Location: Skissernas Museum
For more information, visit this page

Walking the lines – Reflections on walking methods in Jordan

Seminar

Olivia Mason

Olivia Mason (Newcastle University) reflects in this seminar on walking to address broader questions in political geography surrounding power, scale, mobility, embodiment, and knowledge production. Walking still remains a method and practice that has received little attention by political geographers, and this can be traced to a wider absence of discussions of methodology within political geography. Yet the embodied aspects of walking can enable a creative and critical relationship with nature, place, politics and space, reengaging key concepts in political geography such as territory, borders, and the state. Through empirical research conducted on walking trails and with walking groups in the Middle East and North Africa, this seminar explores the situated political geographies of walking and how walking can enable embodied and intimate political geographies to emerge. 

The presentation will be followed by a discussion with and questions from participants. 

This seminar is held on Zoom. Find the link and more information here: https://www.cors.lu.se/en/walking-the-lines.

Olivia Mason is a lecturer in Geography, with a focus on cultural and political geography. Mason’s work sits across cultural, environmental, and political geography, and is broadly centred on mobility politics and resource colonialism, and to date has mostly been focused on Jordan. 

Date and time: 24 April 2025 13:00 to 14:00 
Location: Online
For more information, visit this page

CMES Seminar: “Shattered Landscapes: An Agonistic Approach to Ethnography in Palestine and Israel”

Welcome to a CMES Research Seminar with Anne Lene Stein (CMES Political Science, Lund University)

Speaker Bio

Anne Lene Stein is a doctoral student at the Department of Political Science, Lund University. Her PhD project is researching embodied approaches to challenging dominant systems of knowledge in everyday life in Palestine and Israel. Her focus is on the interaction between agonistic and antagonistic dimensions within epistemic struggles and embodied forms of protest. Specifically, Anne Lene Stein examines how Palestinian artists within Israel and the West Bank as well as Israeli anti-Zionist/anti-apartheid activists use embodied performances to disrupt hegemonic knowledge systems and resist various forms of violence and injustice. Her research also touches on future-oriented or utopian reimaginations of Palestine as expressed through these performances. She conceptualises the agonistic-antagonistic interplay as a performative, epistemically disruptive politics—an embodied language of dissent that opens up political spaces for the emergence of new subjectivities.

Date and time: 24 April 2025 13:15 to 14:30
Location: CMES Seminar Room (Finngatan 16)
For more information, visit this page

Spring Choir Concert with the Music Teachers’ Choir

Concert

The music teacher choir from the Malmö Academy of Music sings in the spring with traditional choral songs and new compositions and arrangements by students.

Welcome!

Date and time: 24 April 2025 19:00 to 20:00
Location: St. Mary’s Church, Nobelvägen 20 Malmö
For more information, visit this page

This weekly digest is a collection of news, upcoming events and other opportunities from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University and the wider area, compiled by Graduate School students.

• X-courses
• CMES Seminar with Fulbright Professor Christie S. Warren: Reconstructing Syria
• Lecture: The Spectre of State Capitalism
• Lecture with Former President of Tunisia Dr. Mohamed Moncef Marzouki: “The Arab Democratic Revolutions Have Just Begun”

X-courses

Looking for something extra this autumn? Study one of the University’s new x-courses!

X-courses are short, credit-bearing, flexible and designed to suit those who are already studying. X-courses are independent courses that are not included in programmes. Take the opportunity to learn something new, network with other students and get more out of your studies.

Read more about x-courses at: www.lunduniversity.lu.se/x-courses

CMES Seminar with Fulbright Professor Christie S. Warren: Reconstructing Syria

Welcome to a CMES seminar with Fulbright professor Christie S. Warren (William & Mary Law School) on the reconstruction of Syria.

Speaker Bio

Christie S. Warren is the 2024 – 2025 Fulbright-Lund Distinguished Chair in Public International Law. She is Professor of the Practice of International and Comparative Law and founding Director of the Center for Comparative Legal Studies & Post-Conflict Peacebuilding at William & Mary Law School. 

She has designed, implemented, monitored and assessed academic, constitutional, judicial and legal development and training projects in more than 58 countries throughout Africa, Central and East Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Russia and the Newly Independent States, the Balkans and East Timor.

Warren served as the 1998 – 1999 Supreme Court Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States and the 2010 Senior Expert in Constitutional Issues on the Mediation Support Unit Standby Team within the United Nations Department of Political Affairs. She was named the 2016-2017 Fulbright-Schuman Distinguished Chair at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy and served as a 2019 Visiting Professor of Constitutional Law at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and a 2021 Visiting Professor of International Law at Sapienza University in Rome.  

Date and time: 16 April 2025, 13:15 to 2:30 PM
Location: CMES Seminar Room (Finngatan 16)
For more information, visit this page

Lecture: The Spectre of State Capitalism

Open lecture with Dr Ilias Alami, Assistant Professor in the Political Economy of Development, University of Cambridge

The state is back, and it means business. Since the turn of the 21st century, state-owned enterprises, sovereign funds, and policy banks have vastly expanded their control over assets and markets. Concurrently, governments have experimented with increasingly assertive modalities of statism, from techno-industrial policies and spatial development strategies to economic nationalism and trade and investment restrictions. 

Based on a recently published book, the lecture will argue that we are currently witnessing a historic arc in the trajectories of state intervention, characterized by a drastic reconfiguration of the state’s role as promoter, supervisor, shareholder-investor, and direct owner of capital across the world economy. The lecture will offer a comprehensive analysis of this “new state capitalism”, as commentators increasingly refer to it, and maps out its key empirical manifestations across a range of geographies, cases, and issue areas. The lecture will show that the new state capitalism is rooted in deep geopolitical economic and financial processes pertaining to the secular development of global capitalism, as much as it is the product of the geoeconomic agency of states and the global corporate strategies of leading firms. It will demonstrate that the proliferation of muscular modalities of statist interventionism and the increasing concentration of capital in the hands of states indicate foundational shifts in global capitalism. This includes a growing fusion of private and state capital, and the development of flexible and liquid forms of property that collapse the distinction between state and private ownership, control, and management. This has fundamental implications for the nature and operations of global capitalism and world politics.

Date and time: 16 April 2025, 15:15 – 17:00 
Location: Asia Library, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Sölvegatan 18 B, Lund
For more information, visit this page

Lecture with Former President of Tunisia Dr. Mohamed Moncef Marzouki: “The Arab Democratic Revolutions Have Just Begun”

In collaboration with the Association of Foreign Affairs in Lund, CMES is hosting an online lecture with the former President of Tunisia, Dr. Mohamed Moncef Marzouki.

In this lecture, Dr. Mohamed Moncef Marzouki, Tunisia’s first democratically elected president, will reflect on the hopes and setbacks of the Arab Spring. Drawing from his unique political journey, he explores the challenges facing democracy in the Arab world and questions whether it can remain a credible, viable alternative amid rising authoritarianism and global disillusionment. 

Dr. Mohamed Moncef Marzouki is a human rights activist, medical doctor, and former President of Tunisia. Elected after the 2011 revolution, he championed transparency, civil liberties, and democratic dialogue. Now in exile, he continues to advocate for democracy in Tunisia and across the Arab world.

This is an online event. To attend, please register following this link. Following your registration, you will receive an email from the Association of Foreign Affairs with the link to the Zoom-lecture.

The lecture will be moderated by Said Haji.

Date and time: 17 April 2025, 17:30 to 18:30 
Location: Online (Zoom)
For more information, visit this page

This weekly digest is a collection of news, upcoming events and other opportunities from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University and the wider area, compiled by Graduate School students.

• SASNET Seminar with Anisur Rahman: “Censorship, Silence and Persecution of Writers in South Asia”
• Workshop | Brown, Black, Queer and In-Between: Remembrance
• Work like any other but like no other: Labour rights for working prisoners in Sweden
• Fika with the Graduate School Study Council

SASNET Seminar with Anisur Rahman: “Censorship, Silence and Persecution of Writers in South Asia”

On Tuesday, SASNET is hosting a public seminar with Anisur Rahman, Bengali-Swedish poet, public educator and journalist, on the decline in press freedom in Bangladesh and the South Asia region

In recent years, South Asia has seen a rapid deterioration in press freedom and freedom of expression. Censorship, silence, and persecution of writers are increasingly prevalent in South Asian countries such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The severe decline in press freedom in Bangladesh, particularly in recent months following the downfall of the Sheikh Hasina regime, marks one of the most drastic setbacks in the country’s fifty-year history. 

In this SASNET seminar, Bengali-Swedish poet, playwright, public educator, and journalist Anisur Rahman will share his observations on this pressing issue, focusing on Bangladesh and drawing insights from his two-decade career in journalism and creative writing.

Date and time: 08 April 2025 13:15 to 14:30 
Location: Department of Political Science, Room Ed222A, Lund
For more information, visit this page

Workshop | Brown, Black, Queer and In-Between: Remembrance

In connection with the on-going studies of PhD candidate Iury Salustiano Trojaborg at Malmö Theatre Academy and Agenda 2030 Graduate School.

Following up on the workshop “Identity and Change-Making: Black, Brown, and Queer Experiences in the Nordics”, facilitated by Nana Osei-Kofi in November 2024, we will continue our work of community building through creative storytelling. This time our work will be focused on counter-archiving as a black feminist methodology of care.

How do we remember, and more importantly who do we remember?

As black and brown people living in the Nordics we rarely figure in public archives. This is true for the way we tell stories of queer resistance and struggles for liberation as well. 
Inspired by queer of colour and black feminist approaches to memory and counter-archiving, we will explore what we know, and don’t know about our kin from the past. Who has been organising for queer, black and brown liberation before us? How are we connected to our ancestors, by blood and by collective struggle? 

Each participant will bring the name of a person, known or unknown that has lived before them and that they would like to inscribe into a collective counter-archive. The second part of the workshop will be an exercise in developing our personal archives through creative journaling practices.

Facilitator: Oda-Kange Midtvåge Diallo
Target audience: QTBIPOC Community 

Date and time: 08 April 2025 10:00 to 16:00
Location: Inter Arts Center, Bergsgatan 29, 214 22 Malmö (Black Room)
Register here

Work like any other but like no other: Labour rights for working prisoners in Sweden

Welcome to the Higher Seminar in Labour Law with Petra Herzfeld Olsson, Professor of labour law, Stockholm University and Sigrid Nikka, Doctoral student in criminal law, Lund University.

Incarcerated workers earn SEK 13 an hour in Sweden. They are not categorised as workers, however, and therefore are not covered by labour law or collective agreements. But the products of their work – goods and services – are either sold on the open market or used for the benefit of the Swedish Agency for Prisons and the Probation Service, as the services or goods do not have to be bought on the open market. Such low pay would be considered unreasonable for any other work. However, work has been a central aspect of serving time in Swedish prisons for a very long time. Over time, such work has been motivated and governed by different principles and aims, such as the work-first principle, meaning, i.e., that work is both a societal duty and a right, and the aim of disciplining the incarcerated workers for internal and external purposes (resocialisation). The rehabilitative aspect of work has been emphasised. Proposals to raise the pay level have been rejected as being too expensive and counteracting the rehabilitative function of serving time in prison. In this talk I will explain the perceived rationale behind this state of affairs and ask if the situation is compatible with the requirements of dignity set out in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Suggested reading: https://doi.org/10.1177/20319525241266351 

Petra Herzfeld Olsson, Professor of labour law at Stockholm University, will give a talk, followed by comments by Sigrid Nikka, Doctoral student in criminal Law, Lund University.

Everyone is most welcome – please spread the word. No registration is required, but we will be happy if you send us an email if you plan to attend. 

Questions? caroline.ferngren@jur.lu.se; niklas.selberg@jur.lu.se

Date and time: 10 April 2025 13:15 to 15:00
Location: Konferensrummet, 4th floor Tryckeriet, Faculty of Law, Lund and on Zoom
For more information, visit this page

Fika with the Graduate School Study Council

Learn about new student leadership opportunities, PLUTO, and the Social Science Student Union!

Hej Hej Graduate School Students! 

The Study Council would like to invite you to a little fika! While you’re planning the third term, the Study Council would like to offer you the opportunity to get involved in the student union as a student representative. This is where we have the ability to speak and vote directly on issues related to our program and courses with the program coordinators and directors at Graduate School. This fika will give you the chance to learn a little bit about the role and structures of the union. It’s low effort, boosts your resume, and you get to have  a real voice in your education. Not really interested? That’s okay! Come grab free fika! Come vent to us! Maybe we can answer some of your questions regarding the third semester, thesis semester and more! Hope to see you there!

Date and time: 15 April 2025 13:00 to 15:00
Location: Student Lounge at Gamla Kirurgen (R), Lund

This weekly digest is a collection of news, upcoming events and other opportunities from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University and the wider area, compiled by Graduate School students.

• Seminar with Gil Anidjar
• Seminar with Alana Lentin
• Seminar on Climate justice and energy transition
• What awaits Ukraine? Panel discussion

Seminar with Gil Anidjar

Book presentation

On Friday April 4 the Department of Gender Studies will host a seminar with Professor Gil Anidjar from Columbia University who will present his latest book, On the Sovereignty of Mothers – The Political as Maternal. In a series of finely woven meditations on slavery, sovereignty, and the social contract, this book places mothers and mothering at the crux of political thought. During the seminar, he further engages in conversation with Diana Mulinari, professor emerita in Gender Studies at Lund University. 

Date & Time: 4 April 2025 14:15 to 16:00
Location: Gamla Lungkliniken, library on the 4th floor
Link to the event: https://www.genus.lu.se/evenemang/sovereignty-mothers-political-maternal

For more information about the book, visit this page

Seminar with Alana Lentin

Book presentation

On Wednesday April 9, Professor Alana Lentin from Western Sydney University will hold an open lecture on her latest book, The New Racial Regime: Recalibrations of White Supremacy. Taking the reader beyond the distracting framings of culture wars and moral panics, Alana Lentin shows how the attacks on Black, Indigenous and anticolonial thought and praxis reveal the processes through which racial colonial rule is ideologically resecured.

Date and time: 9 April 2025 13:15 to15:00
Location: Lux Aula nedre
Link to the event: https://www.genus.lu.se/evenemang/public-lecture-new-racial-regime-recalibrations-white-supremacy

For more information about the book, visit this page

Climate justice and energy transition

Seminar

Welcome to a seminar with a delegation of NGOs and grassroots organisations from Latin America who will share their experiences and perspectives on the energy transition and its impacts on local communities.

After a short round of presentations we will open up for questions and an inspiring dialogue with the audience.

Participants:

• Oxfam LatinAmerica
• Fuerza de Mujeres Wajuu (Colombia)
• ASEDE (Guatemala)
• La Ruta del Clima (Costa Rica)
• Lund University experts

Moderator: Vasna Ramasar (KEG) and Torsten Krause (LUCSUS)

Date and time: 9 April 2025 10:00 to 12:00
Location: LUCSUS, Biskopsgatan 5, Lund
For more information, visit this page

What awaits Ukraine?

Welcome to a panel discussion about the situation in Ukraine and what the future may look like for both Ukraine and Europe

The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine has now been going on for more than three years and recently both the war and politics have intensified. Putin has taken North Korean soldiers to Kursk and regularly threatens with nuclear weapons. The voices for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine are growing stronger and the negotiations may begin in Saudi Arabia. The change of US president has led to growing uncertainty in the world. How will his policies affect the war? And does Europe need a new strategy for Ukraine? What can history teach us about the situation in Ukraine?

Panelists: Svitlana Babenko, Researcher and Docent in Sociology, Malmö University; Alina Zubkovych,Head of Nordic Ukraine Forum, visiting prof. & academic director in Social Science, Kyiv School of Economics; Yuliya Yurchuk, Senior lecturer of History of Ideas, Södertörn University.
Moderator: Michel Anderlini, assistant senior lecturer in global political studies, Malmö University 

Registration is required. We will offer coffee and a snack.

Date and time: 10 April 2025 18:00 to 19:45
Location: Malmö stadsbibliotek, Röda rummet
Register here