We are excited to introduce a new series highlighting our institutional support members. The members play a central role in the growth and development of our network. The first institution to take the stage is the Department of Government at Uppsala University, represented by Emma Elfversson.
Photo: Vibrant discussions during the regular development research seminar, held together with the department of peace and conflict research. Picture: Tove Hellkvist.
We are excited to introduce a new series highlighting our institutional support members at SweDev. The members play a central role in contributing to the growth and development of the SweDevs research network. Each institution is represented in SweDev’s steering committee, helping to shape the network’s activity plan and engagement initiatives.
In this series, our institutional members will answer a set of questions about their work, research groups, and upcoming projects. They will share insights into what type of research they conduct, its importance for development, and what exciting initiatives they have planned for the year ahead.
The first institution to take the stage is the Department of Government at Uppsala University, represented by Emma Elfversson, who introduces the institution and provides a closer look at their research and contributions to the network.
Can you please introduce yourself and your research group?
– I’m Emma Elfversson, and I’m an associate professor at the Department of Government at Uppsala University. My department teaches development studies as a separate subject, and we are also a strong sub-group of researchers in the department who conduct research on the politics of development, broadly defined.
Can you give examples of the type of research you do in your research group/department?
– One of the key strands of research, given our political science profile, is the role of political institutions in development, and several of us study processes of democratization and autocratization, the role of parties and social movements, and conflicts and political violence, with an empirical focus on the Global South.
– There is also a strong gender research group at the department, and many of the researchers within the development group study questions related to gender, such as the role of quotas in promoting women’s inclusion in politics, and how development cooperation affects women and men differently.
– Scholars within our research group embrace a wide range of perspectives and methodologies, with empirical research spanning from in-depth ethnographic fieldwork in Addis Ababa, via constructivist analysis of development discourse, to statistical analyses of surveys and climate data.
Why is your group’s/department’s research important, and how can it contribute to development?
– Development – as a concept and as a project – is intensely contested, and we can’t understand development without paying attention to politics. Many of the big ‘development challenges’ we face today are inherently political in nature. Take climate change as an example – we know a lot about the technical solutions, but politics prevent us from implementing them. Understanding the power dynamics, goal conflicts, and identity politics inherent in these processes is crucial.
What interesting work does your group/department have lined up in the next 12 months?
– One exciting thing is a grant that we received from UUniCORN – the Uppsala University Conflicting Objectives Research Network – to form an interdisciplinary network around the issue of competing interests in land use and access. During the fall, we are planning a workshop where members will develop new grant applications connected to this theme.
– A group of scholars within our group are also building up a large and long-term research environment around the issue of sexual corruption, in order to strengthen knowledge about this concept and how it can be understood, measured and prevented. This environment will entail a lot of interesting activities in the coming years.