Gender and Politics
Welcome to UPPGAP, the Uppsala Gender and Politics Research Group!
UPPGAP is one of the largest, most diverse, and successful groups of gender and politics researchers in the world. We are a diverse team of around 20 professors, researchers, and PhD students, working in the Department of Government at Uppsala University. We are united by a shared commitment to understanding the complex intersections of gender and politics. Our work spans a wide range of topics, exploring how gender influences political representation, the functioning of political parties, discourses of colonialism, parliamentary dynamics, and issues like violence and corruption in political contexts. Our research is methodologically pluralistic - we use interviews, case studies, statistical analyses, text analysis, and experimental methods - and covers a wide range of geographical contexts.
At the heart of our work is a drive to foster inclusive and innovative research that contributes to advancing both academic and public understanding of gendered dimensions in political life.
On this site, you can explore who we are, our projects, publications, and events to learn more about us and what we do!
Visit UPPGAP
Want to visit UPPGAP as a guest researcher/ visiting PhD student?
PhD Programme
Would you like to apply to the PhD Programme in Political Science?
Seminars
The UPPGAP research group meets about twice a month, on Mondays 12:00-13:00. During these lunch seminars, we discuss paper drafts and project applications or listen to invited speakers.
Would you like to attend or present at one of our seminars? Send an email to: genderandpolitics@statsvet.uu.se
PhD project presentations
On March 24, our UPPGAP PhD students present their PhD projects!
UPPGAP Researchers
Elin Bjarnegård
Professor. Elin's research interests span the field of comparative politics with a particular focus on gender. She has written about men in politics, homosocial networks, and gender washing in authoritarian states, among other things. She is currently the Director of the PhD Program in Political Science.
Olle Folke
Professor. Olle has a background in Economics, and his research interests include inequalities in political representation, gendered political careers, political recruitment and selection, sexual harassment in the labor market, and quantitative methods.
Suruchi Thapar-Björkert
Professor. Suruchi's research falls in four specific areas: Gendered Discourses of Colonialism and Nationalism, Gendered Violence in India and Europe, Ethnicity, Social Capital and Social Exclusion, and Qualitative Feminist Research Methodologies.
Pär Zetterberg
Professor. Pär's main research interests lie in the area of comparative politics, with a focus on gender, and include issues such as candidate recruitment, political parties, political representation, electoral quotas, authoritarianism, political violence, and political behavior.
Christina Bergqvist
Professor Emerita. Christina paved the way for UPPGAP by being the first professor in the department to specialize in gender and politics. She has published extensively on issues related to welfare state politics, state feminism, Swedish politics, public policy, corporatism, and political representation, among other things.
Josefina Erikson
Associate Professor. Josefina's research interests include gendered political institutions, Swedish politics, new institutional theory, and qualitative methods.
Michal Grahn
Associate Professor. Michal's areas of interest include political representation, political behavior, gender, sexuality, and methods.
Cecilia Josefsson
Associate Professor. Cecilia's research focuses on political institutions and representation with a focus on gender. She examines resistance to gender equitable policy, feminist institutionalism, parliaments as gendered workplaces, and how crises affect gendered political representation.
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Camilla Reutersvärd
Associate senior lecturer. Camilla's research focuses on the politics of gender policy in developing contexts. Within this area, her work centers on party politics, social movements, and religious institutions with an empirical focus on Latin America.
Luise Bendfeldt
Researcher. Luise's research interests include critical security studies and feminist theory as well as the stories told about violence and processes of securitisation. She also thinks and writes about theories of 'protection' within IR, sex, and sexualities within international politics, and critical military studies.
Dolores Calvo
Researcher. Dolores holds a PhD in sociology and is currently working on a project on the implementation of policies against sextortion in Tanzania, dealing with questions of abuse of power, sexual abuse, gender norms, coercion, and consent.
Åsa Eldén
Researcher. Åsa works in the project "Sexual abuse of power: Taking action against sextortion in Tanzania". She holds a PhD in sociology and is also an independent consultant and researcher collaborating with agencies and civil society organisations.
Malin Holm
Researcher. Malin's research focuses on social media, gender, and political communication. She investigates the governance of online platforms and how their affordances shape power dynamics in political processes through case studies in a wide variety of contexts, such as the US, Scandinavia, and the Middle East.
Sandra Håkansson
Researcher. Sandra's research mainly focuses on gender and politics, political violence, political representation, candidate recruitment, and gender-based violence. It encompasses research on Sweden, Sri Lanka, Colombia, The US, and the Middle East.
Giulia Mariani
Researcher. Giulia is researching the rising transnational opposition to gender and sexual equality in the European Union, as well as the pushback against court-driven abortion liberalization in the United States.
Nora Anter
PhD Candidate. In her dissertation, Nora studies the representation and selection of women, immigrants, and politically connected bureaucrats using administrative data from Sweden.
Karin Carlsson
PhD Candidate. Karin's research interests center on the democratic costs of opposition to gender equality. She has previously worked on gender mainstreaming in the security sector and peace operations.
Rebecca Eriksson
PhD Candidate. Rebecca's research focuses on the backgrounds (including sex), selection, and influence of political experts in political processes.
Hannah Lundgren
PhD Candidate at the Department of Government and the Institute for Housing and Urban Research. Hannah has a background in political science, development studies, and gender studies. Her dissertation centers on how climate-related understandings and practices relate to broader issues of power and inequality.
Sophie Mainz
PhD Candidate. Sophie's research investigates how right-wing political actors appropriate gender and immigration issues and how such strategies affect citizens' preferences.
UPPGAP Guests
Several guests come to UPPGAP every year to present a paper, give a talk, or work with UPPGAP researchers for a few weeks up to a year.
Previous guests have included:
- Mona Lena Krook, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Rutgers Univeristy
- Aili Tripp, Vilas Research Professor of Political Science, the University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Meolody Valdini, Professor of Political Science, Portland State University
- Amanda Clayton, Assistant Professor in Political Science, the University of California, Berkeley
- Meryl Kenny, Professor of Gender and Politics, the University of Edinburgh
- Sarah Bush, Associate Professor in Political Science, the University of Pennsylvania
- Christina Wolbrecht, Professor in political Science, University of Notre Dame
- Alice Kang, Professor of Political Science and Ethnic Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
- Melanie Hughes, Professor of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh
- Leah McCabe, Research Fellow in Politics and International Relations, University of Edinburgh
Would you like to visit UPPGAP as a visiting scholar or as a visiting PhD student? The Department of Government welcomes visiting researchers and PhD-students from all over the world. Visitors have the opportunity to be involved in a wide range of activities, e.g. lectures, seminars and graduate courses at the department. Depending on availability, we can also offer workspace at the department and IT facilities. The Department does not provide financial payments to visitors.
Click here to fill out a form stating your interest!
"Defending the Status Quo" (OUP, 2024) Cecilia Josefsson
"Tales of Lonely Young Men" (PhD Diss. 2024) Luise Bendfeldt
Research projects
- Autocratic Genderwashing
- Does increased socioeconomic segregation lead to increased political inequality?
- Gender and Political Representation in a (Post-) Pandemic Era: How the Increased Salience of Health and Poverty Issues Affects Women's Political Inclusion and Power in Low-Income Countries
- Gender and social media in contentious elections
- Gender Aspects on Election Violence
- Gender Politics and Electoral Authoritarianism
- Is parliament a gender equal workplace? Exploring working conditions and their impact on legislators’ perform
- Mapping Women Peacemakers: Exploring the “More Women-More Peace” Nexus
- More rights, more participation? The rights of gays, lesbians and bisexuals and their political engagement in Sweden
- Sexual Corruption
- Sexual corruption. Understanding, measuring and preventing abuse of power for sex