Previous staff

Previous staff members

Klas Nilsson received his PhD from Lund University in 2017 and joined the STANCE team in early 2018 after a brief visit at the University of Texas at Austin. In his dissertation, The Money of Monarchs, Nilsson investigated the role of non-tax revenues in the creation of autocratic rule in early modern Sweden. The study draws parallels between the political effects of resource rents in modern oil states and the significance of similar revenues collected by Swedish monarchs, including income derived from royal landownership, rents from mining ventures, and profits generated by state-owned enterprise. In both types of cases, Nilsson argues, access to such revenues seems to have facilitated the transfer of political power from elites and people into the hands of the ruler. He thus highlights an alternative fiscal path of European regime formation that has heretofore been overlooked, due to a general predilection among scholars for focusing only on taxation. As a member of STANCE, Nilsson will continue exploring fiscal aspects of state and regime formation—a perspective sometimes referred to as ‘fiscal sociology’. His research interests also include the study of regime types, political development, military history, and colonialism. [RESEARCHER, January 2018-December 2019]

Cem Mert Dallı is a Master’s student in Welfare Policies and Management at Lund University majoring in Political Science. Before moving to Sweden in 2017 as a Swedish Institute scholarship holder, Cem received his double-major degree in History and Political Science & International Relations from Boğaziçi University, Turkey. He also studied at University of Edinburgh as an exchange student in Spring 2016. Prior to joining STANCE project, he has worked as research assistant in several research projects, including with MIT Professor Fotini Christia, and conducted weekly discussions for Comparative Politics course at Boğaziçi University. His research interests include voting behaviour, redistributive politics, corruption and ethnic conflicts. [INTERN and RESEARCH ASSISTANT, March 2018-November 2019]

Annika Björkdahl is a Professor of Political Science and Editor in Cheif of Cooperation and Conflict. Björkdahl’s research includes international and local peacebuilding with a particular focus on urban peacebuilding, and gender and transitional justice and she is currently directing three research projects: Contested Administrations - Conflict Resolution and the Improvement of Democracy; Divided Cities a Challenge to Development and Peacebuilding; Transitional Justice and Gender Just Peace. As a part of the STANCE research project Björkdahl investigates war and statebuilding. [RESEARCHER, January 2015 - July 2018]

Swaantje Marten is a Bachelor student in Development Studies at Lund University majoring in Economic History. Her interests lie in sustainable human development in a socio-economic sense. Swaantje is born and raised in Germany and has lived in Argentina for parts of her life. [RESEARCH ASSISTANT, September 2017 - Spetember 2018]

Erik Ringmar joined the Department of Political Science at Lund University in January 2014, is a leading scholar of the history of international relations, with a long publication record including six monographs (two with Cambridge University Press) and several articles in leading international-relations journals. Ringmar received his PhD from Yale University in 1993. He has extensive teaching experience from the London School of Economics' Government Department and from Shanghai Jiaotong University in China, where he until 2014 was Zhiyuan Chair professor. His main research interests include international politics, economic sociology and cultural history. His latest book, Liberal Barbarism, addresses European imperialism in China during the 19th century. [RESEARCHER, January 2015 - January 2018]

Lina Hjärtström has a Bachelor's Degree in Peace and Conflict Studies from Lund University and a Master's Degree in Political Science, also from Lund University. She has studied Political Science at Uppsala University (2010) and International Relations and Political Philosophy at the University of Otago, New Zealand (2013). She has done an internship at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs’ Department for disarmament and non-proliferation, and her research interests include peace building, disarmament and feminist theory and practice. Lina is also working as Editorial Assistant for the academic journal Cooperation and Conflict. [RESEARCH ASSISTANT, January, 2015 - August, 2016]

Moa Olin has a Master’s degree in Political Science from Gothenburg University, and a Bachelor’s degree from Lund University. She has also studied Political Science at the Paris 8 University (2010) and French language and literature at the University of Dalarna and Gothenburg University. In 2013 she interned at the Swedish National Agency for Education and in 2014 the Department of Political Science at Lund University, affiliated with the Reform Capacity of Governments project. Her research interests include education and youth politics, labor politics and public administration. Her Master’s thesis explores the role of administrative capacity on unemployment benefit reform in Latin America. [RESEARCH ASSISTANT, August, 2015 - August, 2016]

Frida Nilsson is a Master’s student in Political Science at the University of Gothenburg with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science. Her research interests include institutions and political theory, mainly related to the field of environmental policy. Her Bachelor’s thesis examined environmental work in Swedish municipalities. In 2013, she interned at the Division for Climate at the Swedish Ministry of the Environment. [INTERN, September-October 2015]

Karin Bäckstrand, Professor in Political Science at Lund University, is a leading scholar within the field of global environmental politics and an expert on the role of scientific expertise and risk in environmental decision-making, with several influential publications in top environmental politics journals. Bäckstrand received her doctorate in Political Science at Lund University in 2001. Between 2002 and 2004 she held a postdoctoral position as a Wallenberg Fellow for Environment and Sustainability at the Laboratory for Energy and Environment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During 2013, she was visiting scholar at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. [RESEARCHER, January-December 2015]