Cecilia Strand

Cecilia Strand, Ph.D., Department of Informatics and Media, Uppsala University, Sweden. Between 2003 and 2010, I worked with health communication related development cooperation in Lesotho, Namibia and Uganda, parallel to completing my dissertation Perilous Silences and Counterproductive Narratives Pertaining to HIV/AIDS in the Ugandan, Lesotho and Namibian Press.

My interest in development cooperation and international health remained after my dissertation and between 2012-2013 I was involved in a UNDP-hosted research project -the Global Commission on HIV and the Law- focusing on the law as a tool to improve marginalized populations’ access to HIV/AIDS services around the world.

I have since my dissertation continued to pursue research on sexual minority rights in Africa, with special attention rights struggled in Eastern Africa. Although I have a broad interest in Sub-Saharan Africa, I have primarily focused on the LGBTQ+ community in Uganda and their struggle for equal rights as enshrined in the Ugandan constitution. Between 202I- 2024 I was involved in a project studying social media platforms as spaces for activism as well as a spaces for self-controlled visibility and the implications of becoming more visible in a context where discrimination and persecution are both sanctioned and actively endorsed by the Government. The project -Navigating visibility in contexts of state-sanctioned homophobia: development actors and LGBTQ+ rights defenders in Uganda and Russia -was funded by the Swedish Research Council.

Parallel to human rights advocacy in repressive contexts, I have gradually become more interested in gender-based violence both more broadly as a global phenomenon and, in particular, intimate partner violence. As of 2021, I am part of a research group that works in close collaboration with a group of Swedish women's shelters, developing and evaluating a group-based intervention aiming to support intimate partner violence survivors' positive post-traumatic growth. The project is funded by FORTE and runs until mid-2026.

My growing research focus on intimate partner violence, have also come to include what is often referred to as legal abuse. That is, a perpetrators'' (ab)use of legal provisions in a particular legal context, to exert coercive control, harass and intimidate a current or former intimate partner.

Im currently involved in the following research projects and networks:

CIRCUS project- Trans-disciplinary approaches to intimate partner violence (Tvärvetenskapens broar - ett nätverk om mäns våld mot kvinnor & våld i nära relationer). project leader. 2024-01-01- 2025-12.31
For more information on the network: https://www.uu.se/institution/informatik-och-media/forskning/forskningsprojekt/tvarvetenskapligt-natverk-om-mans-vald-mot-kvinnor-och-vald-i-nara-relationer

CIRCUS research project development- Legal violence in Sweden. 2024-08-01-2025-06-01.

FORTE Project grant. Strengthening intimate partners violence survivors’ resilience (Kraft att gå vidare: En intervention för att stärka kvinnor utsatta för våld i nära relationer). Project 2023-01-01- 2025-12-31

VR/Swedish Research Council. Navigating visibility in contexts of state-sanctioned homophobia: development actors and LGBTQ rights defenders in Uganda and Russia, dnr 2020-04003. 2021-2024

Swedish Institute, Creative Force 2022-2023. Project Creative 2022-2023. Projekt Empowering Queer Youth through Media & Culture, 15 Dec 2022 - 14 Dec 2023.