New associate professors at the Department of Law
The three associate professors appointed this year, Henrik Bellander, Caroline Johansson, and Jonatan Schytzer, recently gave lectures for their colleagues at the Department of Law. Read about their ongoing research below.
Henrik Bellander, Associate Professor of Civil and Criminal Procedural Law. Photo: Magnus Andersson
In his thesis as well as in later publications, Henrik Bellander's research has covered two main areas of interest: a general research of procedural law methods and developments, and a dogmatic research of concrete procedural law problems. In addition to in-depth research and problematization of litigation costs and funding issues, a large part of his published research has concerned issues of res judicata in civil proceedings, which has also been the subject of a postdoctoral project funded by the Ragnar Söderberg Foundation. His publications also include criminal procedure law, inter alia as co-author of the book series Rättegång. Among Henrik Bellander's assignments outside the university can be mentioned that he is Sweden's member of the board of the Nordic Association for Procedural Law and a member of the Board Authority for law clerks in Swedish courts (sv. Notarienämnden).
Caroline Johansson's research mainly concerns collective labor law and questions of who regulates what and what scope for action different actors have in relation to each other. Although the starting point is usually collective labor law, it is also about how collective agreements relate to, for example, various social security benefits, or how national law and Swedish collective agreements relate to regulation at the EU level, something that was also addressed in Caroline's doctoral thesis from 2018.
Caroline is currently involved in three different research projects. In “A new era for the Swedish labour law model,” led by Petra Herzfeld Olsson at Stockholm University, the project is partly legal and partly labor market science, and in addition to legal methods, interviews are conducted with people who have played a central role in one or more of the processes that led to legislation. Caroline is also participating in a Dutch comparative project on occupational pensions, in which Dutch occupational pension regulations are being compared with those in Sweden, the UK, and New Zealand. Aspects of interest include how regulations can increase the coverage of occupational pensions, including for people in precarious employment. The third project is in its final phase and deals with major structural changes in society and how such changes are managed.
Associate Professor of Private Law Jonatan Schytzer's research focuses on foundational questions in insolvency law, particularly when a claim arises. Since completing his doctoral thesis, his work has expanded into adjacent fields, including labour law, tax law, and environmental law. In the project "The Environment in Bankruptcy," funded by the Torsten Söderberg Foundation, he examines how the polluter-pays principle can be upheld even when operators enter insolvency. The project has resulted in a monograph published by Norstedts, as well as international publications and collaborations with the World Bank and INSOL International.
Schytzer serves on the board of the Younger Academics Network of Insolvency Law (YANIL) within INSOL Europe, and is Chair of the Emerging Scholars Group at the Insolvency Law Academy. His work is characterised by a commitment to identifying practical legal problems and developing doctrinal solutions in dialogue with both theory and practice.
Facts
Associate Professor is an academic title that signifies a higher level of scientific competence than a doctorate alone. In Sweden, the title corresponds to approximately four years of full-time research after completing a doctoral degree, and the researcher has demonstrated through various publications and the like that they have considerably broadened and deepened their research in comparison with the doctoral thesis.
Associate Professor is not a profession, but at state universities you are admitted as an ‘unpaid associate professor’. The form of employment is usually a senior lecturer.