Mia Liinason

Background

I took my doctoral degree in Gender Studies in 2011 on the PhD-thesis Feminism and the Academy. Exploring the politics of institutionalization in Gender Studies in Sweden. In 2016, I was appointed Wallenberg Academy Fellow by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, in collaboration with the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The same year, I was appointed Docent of Gender Studies at the University of Gothenburg. 2018 I was elected into the Young Academy of Sweden. In 2019, I was appointed Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Gothenburg. In 2021, I took up my position as Professor of Gender Studies at Lund University. 

Research areas

•    Processes of globalization, borders, communities
•    Digital technologies in interconnection with the cultural and the social
•    Transnational social movements
•    Feminist-, antiracist- and LGBTI+ activisms

Ongoing research and teaching

In my research, I am interested in dynamics between transformation and power. Within this interest, I have been exploring diverse forms of feminist and lgbti+ activism in transnational exchanges, in the Scandinavian countries and in Sweden, historically and today. Currently, I am conducting research in several research- and collaborative projects which broadens and deepens my research interests in various ways.

I am the director of the 5-year interdisciplinary research cluster TechnAct: Transformations of Struggle, which examines the impact of digital technologies on social movements and civil society engagements. Together with a cross-disciplinary research team and an international network, this research cluster attends to the interconnections between the digital, the social and the cultural in various empirical sites, such as digital cultures, emergent communities and transnational civil societies.  

I lead the project Liveability at the crossroads of religion, gender and sexuality, which seeks to identify what makes, and could make, spaces livable for lgbtq+ people of faith. The project evolves around four case studies with Muslim, Jewish, Roman Catholic and Sami communities located in the South, West, East and North of Sweden. Bringing together multisited ethnography with digital ethnography and life story interviews, this project explores the religious and social barriers encountered by lgbtq+ people of faith across diverse religious traditions, and develops new understandings of the transformative aspects of religion on multiple scales, from the individual to the collective. 

I am also researcher in Change is Key! a RJ-funded research program, that aims to create computational tools to explore how languages, societies and cultures have changed over time.  The program spans six years (2022 - 2027) with a total of 11 researchers, one research engineer and six partner universities. The program will develop a methodology to detect change in language. My case study in the program examines the impact of emancipatory language change on cultural transformation, and how shifts in values and norms, in turn, influence the use of language, diachronically and synchronically. 

I am part of the network of excellence NETHATE, a Marie Curie Intensive Training Network, which brings together an interdisciplinary team of researchers to examine the dynamics of the spread of hate in both offline and online fora, mitigation and reconciliation strategies, and the impact on victims and bystanders. 

In addition, I am coordinator of the international research network Gender, secularities and religiosities across the globe, which advances cross-disciplinary and transregional conversations on the intricate dynamics of secularity, religiosity and gender across the globe.

I recently finalized the collaborative project Spaces of Resistance. A study of gender and sexualities in times of transformation, which explored transnational encounters in feminist and LGBTI+ activism across Scandinavia, Russia and Turkey (together with Olga Sasunkevich, University of Gothenburg, Selin Çağatay, Central European University and Hülya Arik, University of Toronto). The book Feminist and LGBTI+ Activism across Russia, Scandinavia and Turkey. Transnationalizing Spaces of Resistance, Palgrave Macmillan Springer International Publishing 2022, presents the insights drawn from this research.