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.
In this week’s digest:
- Conference: Human rights and environmental politics – recent developments and historical perspectives
- Seminar: Human Rights Law Discussion Group – The Creation of the State of Palestine: An Act in Four Parts
- Conspiracy Ambivalence: Public Lecture by Prof. Clare Birchall, King’s College London
- Seminar: Building “Restoration Futures”: From Ecological Repair to Creative Transformations
- The Sociology and Social Anthropology Seminar Series presents: Hans Steinmüller
- PhD defence in Political Science: Agnese Pacciardi
- Brown Bag Seminar – Meaning and Cognition: Love and alienation: Gendered single life in contemporary Sweden
- Internship Opportunity: Europa Direkt
- Between Checkpoints – Human rights event with journalist Andrey X
Human rights and environmental politics – recent developments and historical perspectives
Conference
Welcome to a two-hour symposium to discuss recent developments and historical perspectives on human rights and environmental politics together with civil society actors and scholars in the Lund University’s Human Rights Profile Area.
This event will focus on recent backlashes against human rights and environmental politics and explore the underlying reasons for it with an emphasis on dialogues between researchers and civil society actors. The event consists of two parts: one set of presentations from invited researchers and one panel discussion with invited civil society actors. The event is funded by the Lund University Human Rights Profile Area. It is a hybrid event and details about the venue are provided below.
Date and time: November 5, 2025, 9:30 AM -12:00 PM
Location: SOL:H135a Center for Languages and Literature, Helgonabacken 12, Lund and on Zoom
For more information, visit this page
Human Rights Law Discussion Group _ The Creation of the State of Palestine: An Act in Four Parts
Seminar
The Human Rights Law Discussion Group is funded by the Centre for European Studies at Lund University, in collaboration with the ERC Starting Grant project “Refugee Finance: Histories, Frameworks, Practices (REF-FIN)” and the VR project “Refugee protection or cherry picking? Assessing new admission policies for refugees in Europe” (ARISE).
The debate on the statehood of Palestine continues to engender controversy, even though almost all States, at the time of writing, recognize it. This is because Palestine’s territory remains under a prolonged (unlawful) military occupation, and in the case of Gaza, armed conflict. Yet, how Palestine became a State under these conditions has not been adequately explained. When did Palestine become a State; how did it become one, given its lack of effective governance, and what is the source of its title to territory? This contribution seeks to answer these questions by explaining how Palestine became a State over the course of a century, constitutively, that is, through the process of State recognition, by focusing on four key moments: (1) Palestine’s provisional recognition as an independent nation in Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations (1919); (2) the vote in the U.N. General Assembly on Resolution 181 (II) that established two States in Palestine with Jerusalem as a corpus separatum (1947); (3) Recognition accorded to the State of Palestine by 100 other States when the Palestine Liberation Organization issued a declaration of independence (1988), and implicit recognition accorded to the State of Palestine by those States that voted in favour of U.N. General Assembly Resolutions 67/19 (2012) and ES-10/23 (2024) that granted Palestine State-making powers to accede to treaties and join international organisations; and (4) events at the U.N. in September 2025 following the High-level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution (July 2025).
Dr Victor Kattan is Assistant Professor in Public International Law at the University of Nottingham School of Law where he is the deputy director of the Nottingham International Law and Security Centre.
For people outside the Faculty of Law at Lund University who wish to participate either on site or digitally please register your participation by sending an e-mail to daria.davitti@jur.lu.se.
Date and time: 5 November 2025 14:15 to 15:30
Location: Juridiska fakulteten, Tetra Laval and Zoom
For more information, visit this page
Conspiracy Ambivalence: Public Lecture by Prof. Clare Birchall, King’s College London
Lecture
In this keynote, Birchall will explore conspiracy theory as a contestation over knowledge through the idea of ambivalence: holding conflicting feelings or contradictory ideas about something.
Self-reflexively, this involves a re-examination of her stance, outlined in Knowledge Goes Pop, that conspiracy theory is a necessary possibility of knowledge, one that shows us how all knowledge is only ever speculation/theory and how legitimacy is conferred by mystical foundations. What are the implications of this considering the monopolization of conspiracism by the populist right? She will also look at the ambivalence displayed by some former conspiracy content producers towards contemporary conspiracism. Contestations over knowledge do not, therefore, only occur between obvious factions (the counterdisinfo sector vs conspiracy influencers or FIMI operatives; medical institutions vs conspiritualists; fact-checked legacy media vs free speech evangelist online platforms etc.) but also within one realm or subjectivity. We can refer to this as conspiracy ambivalence. What can this condition tell us about the politics of knowledge today?
This lecture is part of the conference ‘Truthers’ and ‘Truth Defenders’: Understanding Conflicts over Conspiracy Theories, which is organized by the team of the ERC project CONSPIRATIONS.
Date and time: November 6, 2025 4:00 PM
Location: LUX:C126 Helgonavägen 3, 223 62 Lund
For more information, visit this page
Building “Restoration Futures”: From Ecological Repair to Creative Transformations
Seminar
Restoration has become a key environmental agenda of the present era, exemplified by the UN’s current Decade of Ecosystem Restoration (2021-30) and pursued through a host of policies worldwide. But what does it mean to “restore” a landscape? Existing paradigms of thought understand restoration as a process of ecological recovery, yet provide only limited guidance on the ends toward which restoration should be pursued. In this talk, I develop the notion of “restoration futures”, which frames restoration as a contested and value-driven process of building more sustainable and thriving landscapes. I discuss some of my existing research on why large-scale target-driven restoration often fails, and why more empowered local governance can encourage success. I then present an emerging framework for studying restoration futures, followed by preliminary findings from a large comparative analysis of restoration values and aspirations drawn from cases in 20 countries globally. A futures lens makes explicit diverse aspirations and value conflicts, with potential to support more creative and democratic decision-making on restoration goals: what we wish to recover from the past, what aspects of the past we may seek to undo, what we strive to keep from the present, what futures we hope to avoid, and what we aspire to achieve. Toward which futures should we restore?
Harry Fischer is a Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor (Docent) in the Department of Forest Ecology and Management at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Originally trained as a human geographer, he has held positions in the United States, India, and Australia. His current work looks at local natural resource governance, climate vulnerability and adaptation, and the social dimensions of forest and landscape restoration.
Harry Fischer is a Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor (Docent) in the Department of Forest Ecology and Management at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Originally trained as a human geographer, he has held positions in the United States, India, and Australia. His current work looks at local natural resource governance, climate vulnerability and adaptation, and the social dimensions of forest and landscape restoration.
Date and time: 6 November 2025 11:00 to 12:00
Location: Carson, 3rd floor, Josephson building, Biskopsgatan 5, Lund
For more information, visit this page
The Sociology and Social Anthropology Seminar Series presents: Hans Steinmüller
Seminar
‘In Search of Simplicity: Complexity and Complicity in Social Anthropology and in the Social Sciences’, presented by Hans Steinmüller, Prof. of anthropology, London School of Economics
Social complexity is often said to increase with technological development, the division of labour, and the centralization of power. Yet, from the perspective of local actors, these very features can serve to simplify the environment.
Social scientists are often complicit in such processes of simplification, thereby misrecognising the intricate dynamics of interaction in so-called ‘simple societies’. In this lecture, I offer some examples of the complicities of care and violence in rural China and highland Myanmar. To appreciate their complexity, we must attend to emergent forms of simplicity. This may be possible with an anthropological concept of commensuration.
Date and time: 6 November 2025 15:00 to 17:00
Location: Gamla kirurgen, Room R240
For more information, visit this page
PhD defence in Political Science: Agnese Pacciardi
PhD Defence
Agnese Pacciardi has written a thesis entitled: Mobility as a Practice : Border Externalisation and Colonial Encounters at the Euro-Senegalese Borderlands
External Reviewer: Associate Professor Joris Schapendonk, Radboud University
Abstract
What do we learn about borders and migration policies when we examine them from the perspective of communities living in the borderlands, and through the theoretical lenses of mobility?
This thesis explores the effects of EU border externalisation policies on those most affected by them, focusing on the lived experiences of Senegalese communities throughout Senegal. Through extensive ethnographic fieldwork, it investigates how individuals and communities navigate, adapt to and contest the constraints imposed by externalised borders whether or not they are on the move. Drawing on and contributing to critical border and migration studies, and grounded in feminist decolonial epistemologies, this research shifts the analytical gaze from the border itself to mobility as a multidimensional practice: imagined, embodied, and political. In doing so, it reveals how the spillover effects of border externalisation extend far beyond individual border-crossers, embedding violence, death, and precarity into everyday life across entire communities. Yet, it also shows how these same individuals and communities reappropriate and resist these constraints through creative and strategic expressions of agency, making visible a broader range of possibilities that challenges dominant migration and border regimes.
Date and time: 7 November 2025 10:00
Location: Eden auditorium, Allhelgona kyrkogata 14, Lund
For more information, visit this page
Brown Bag Seminar – Love and alienation: Gendered single life in contemporary Sweden
Seminar
Veronica Flyman presents “Love and alienation: Gendered single life in contemporary Sweden“
The department’s lunch seminar series is an informal arena for our own researcher’s 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!
If you are not a student or member of staff and would like to attend the event please email Lea Fünfschilling (lea.funfschilling@soc.lu.se) no later than 48 hours before the start of the seminar to inquire about available places.
Date and time: 11 November 2025 12:05 to 13:00
Location: The Department of Sociology, Gamla lungkliniken (House G), Room 335
For more information, visit this page
Europa Direkt Sydskåne is looking for interns for spring 2026!
Internship Opportunity
Are you interested in the EU’s opportunities and looking for exciting challenges in areas such as strategic communication, EU funding and development work? Then an internship at Europa Direkt Sydskåne could be something for you. Be part of engaging through inspiring activities and informative information about the EU and EU policies.
Your tasks will include conducting research, monitoring EU funds, EU conferences, booking speakers for our seminars and conferences, as well as ongoing administrative work. You will organize, market and participate in events, training and campaigns about the EU and EU opportunities. Depending on your skills, you may have the opportunity to give lectures, monitor EU project opportunities, participate in project advice, and write engaging posts and articles in our channels.
Qualifications: We are looking for interns from European Studies or European Affairs Master, but also a university student studying project planning, communication, marketing, economics, law, and political science with a focus on EU funding or the EU may be the right candidate for us.
Contact person: Lia Sandberg (lia.sandberg@sjobo.se)
Application Deadline: 12 November 2025
For more information, visit this page
Between Checkpoints – Human rights event with journalist Andrey X
Other
The Andrey X Speaking Tour brings audiences face-to-face with the realities of life under occupation in Palestine. Through first-hand accounts, the program highlights stories of resilience, resistance, and the human consequences of demolitions and settler violence.
Beyond testimony, the evening features a dynamic cultural program — including live music, spoken word, and standup — creating a space where art, humor, and reflection come together. In the foyer, audiences can explore a solidarity fair showcasing grassroots organizations and local craftsmen, offering insight and connection to cultural and social initiatives.
This is more than an event — it is a gathering of voices, bridging cultural gaps, sparking dialogue, and inspiring action. Each city on the tour will have a unique program, featuring local artists, panels, and special performances alongside Andrey’s testimony.
Date and time: 19 November 2025 18:00 to 21:30
Location: CINEMA PANORAMIC Friisgatan 19 D, Malmö
For more information, visit this page