Two new associate professors introduce themselves
As newly appointed associate professors, Martin Dawidowicz and Mikael Ruotsi recently gave lectures to their colleagues at the department, in which they spoke about the research they are currently conducting.
Martin Dawidowicz. Photo: Lasse Blom
Martin Dawidowicz is a generalist public international lawyer with a variety of specialist interests, notably state responsibility for serious breaches of international law and unilateral coercive measures (third-party countermeasures). These issues were addressed in his Cambridge PhD thesis, later published as a monograph by Cambridge University Press in 2017. His monograph examines one of the great, unresolved questions of current international law: the position of third-party countermeasures.
In addition to wider research on the law of state responsibility and the obligation of non-recognition, his publications have also been concerned with questions of self-determination, treaty interpretation and international dispute settlement. His current research is focused on the issue of reparations for Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine, especially the question of the establishment of a sound legal regime for the confiscation of Russian state-owned assests frozen by the EU and the International Claims Commission for Ukraine. Martin Dawidowicz’s research has been cited with approval in various UN documents (e.g. Report of the International Law Commission, 2025) and in foreign (UK, High Court of Justice) as well as international courts (CJEU and ICJ, Written statement of the League of Arab States).
Mikael Ruotsi. Photo: Mikael Wallerstedt
Mikael Ruotsi's research primarily focuses on fundamental constitutional issues. His doctoral thesis examined the relationship between Sweden’s constitutional provisions on freedom of expression and the country’s international obligations. He has also published a monograph on constitutional amendments, in which the Swedish provisions governing constitutional amendments are, among other things, examined in relation to the democratic regression that has characterised recent decades.
He is currently conducting a research project, funded by the Torsten Söderberg Foundation, which examines the intersection of the principle of public access to official documents with a partly new perspective on the protection of privacy.
Among Mikael Ruotsi’s external appointments, it is worth noting that he has served as an expert in several public inquiries and is a member of the Transparency Council at the Psychological Defence Authority.
What does the title Docent / Associate Professor signify?
Docent or 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.