Sofie Bedford

Short presentation

I am an Associate Professor (Docent) in Political Science and affiliated researcher at Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies (IRES) at Uppsala University. I have a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stockholm University and an MA in Peace and Conflict Research from Uppsala University. The title of my 2009 PhD thesis is Islamic Activism in Azerbaijan: Repression and Mobilization in a Post-Soviet Context. My ongoing and recent research projects are further described below.

Keywords

• social movements
• political mobilization
• hybrid regimes and democratization
• autocratic politics
• post- soviet Eurasia and the Caucasus
• opposition
• Azerbaijan
• Islamic activism
• Belarus
• Armenia
• Georgia
• democracy promotion
• reform cooperation

Biography

Dr. Sofie Bedford is an Associate Professor (Docent) in Political Science and an affiliated researcher at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies (IRES). Her Ph.D. project focused on the relation between society, state and religion in the post-Soviet context and involved extensive fieldwork in Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. She has since continued her research on religious, political and civic activism in the Azerbaijani context but also in comparison to other authoritarian states (Belarus in particular). Dr. Bedford was the PI of the project Building Sustainable Opposition in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes, funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR) and has successfully established herself as a leading expert on opposition and mobilization in the post-Soviet sphere, Azerbaijan and Belarus in particular. Currently she is the lead of a VR funded project focused on Swedish support for gender equality and sexual rights in Armenia and Georgia. She has published widely in academic journals and edited volumes and has also been teaching at University of Vienna and Webster Vienna Private University.

Research

Project: Following Swedish Aid: Translation and Transformation of Sweden’s Gender Equality and Sexual Rights Discourses in the Development Cooperation with Eastern Europe (FoSAid)

Sweden is among the leading countries when it comes to providing development aid for promotion of gender equality and sexual rights in non-Western contexts. Informed by theory of translation and actor-centered theory to democratization, FoSAid focuses on how the choices and strategies of key actors in democracy assistance – donors, implementers, aid-recipients and their beneficiaries, as well as the interaction between them, impacts the features and functions of Swedish promotion of gender equality and sexual rights discourses in Armenia and Georgia.

We use qualitative textual and ethnographic methods to follow how Swedish financial support allocated for gender equality and sexual rights development project facilitates the travel of Swedish idealized narratives across national, regional, and geopolitical borders and how these narratives get reinterpreted, contested and adapted in the process.

Project: Security, Equality and Mindsets in South Caucasus (SEMS)

South Caucasus has experienced prolonged conflicts that have proven to be hard to mitigate. SEMS aims at better understanding the severe and locked-in security situation in the South Caucasus, primarily by investigating the mindsets of key actors and groups in these societies (Russia excluded), with a focus on social dominance orientation, perceptions on gender equality and LGBT-rights, and perceptions on the specific security issues facing the countries. SEMS consists of a number of case studies to this end. Dr. Bedford will be contributing to the project through a comparative study of the diplomatic relations between Turkey and Azerbaijan and Georgia respectively. The research will focus on perceptions of Turkey’s role in the region and foreign policy of these countries, as well as possible scenarios for future development. She will also be in charge of the case study Securitization, Politicization and Mobilization of Religion in Azerbaijan, analyzing how religion is securitized (and de-securitized), politicized and mobilized by various religious and secular actors. Understanding how these roles, either real or envisioned sometimes can be very conflicting will provide better understand the dynamics of the religion-state-society relationship and the larger regional security situation. The four-year project started in 2016 and is financed by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). The project leader is Professor Li Bennich-Björkman.

Project: Building Sustainable Opposition in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes

The study’s focus is ‘opposition’ in harsh political climates that, not being able to achieve any concessions from the state, has come to be written off as ‘failed’ in much of the previous literature. Finding this approach unconstructive the project strives to problematize what successful opposition in electoral authoritarian regimes is, as well as highlighting the dynamism of opposition in these types of contexts. Hence, the project pursues an indebt comparative study of opposition as ‘work in progress’ in two electoral autocratic regimes – Belarus and Azerbaijan where ‘opposition’ is generally described as having ‘failed’. The main aims of the study are to investigate the recent organizational changes within Azerbaijani and Belarusian oppositions, observe and analyze the new opposition dynamics in action and theoretically elaborate on how to build constructive opposition in these types of political settings. Dr. Bedford is the leader of this three-year project that started in 2015 and is financed by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet).