Sofia Strid

About Sofia Strid

Sofia Strid is Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies at Örebro University since 2017. She has previously held positions as lecturer and researcher in Gender Studies, Policy Research, Political Science, Sociology and Women's Studies in Austria, Belgium, Sweden and the UK. Her research profile is international, multi-disciplinary and collaborative, with many European multi-partner project and collaborations. She has some one hundred publications.

Research

Sofia Strid's research interests are oriented towards the social and political sciences and are both qualitative and quantitative, summarised as: 1) feminist and social theory; 2) politics and policy, mobilisation and opposition; 3) gendered and intersectional perspectives on sustainability; and 3) feminist violence studies, in online/offline contexts. 

Sofia Strid co-directs the three-university GEXcel International Collegium for Advanced Transdisciplinary Gender Studies with Professor Liisa Husu, and chairs two research strands within the field Gender, Violence & Society. Sofia Strid also directs the Centre for Violence Studies, together with Susanne Strand, Associate Professor in Criminology. 

Sofia Strid's research is funded by e.g. the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Institute for Gender Equality, the Swedish Research Council and FORTE.

Some ongoing projects 

• Gender-based Violence and Institutional Responses: Building a Knowledge-base and Operational Tools to make Universities and Research Organisations Safe (UniSAFE) (Funded by the EU H2020 2021-2024). In UniSAFE, a nine EU-partner team and national researchers, all in all some 50 multidisciplinary researhers and innovators, investigate gender-based violence and sexual harassment in higher education in Europe. The data include policies and legal frameworks in the EU27 and three associated countries, a prevalence study (n=450,000) in 15 member states, and 12-18 in depth case studies of organisational responses and infrastructures.
  
  
• Regimes of Violence: Theorising and Explaining Variations in the Production of Violence in Welfare State Regimes (Funded by VR 2018-2021). In Violence regimes, a transnational team of senior multi-disciplinary researchers analyse, theorise, and explain how violence is produced and conceptualized in European welfare states. We analyse the ontology of violence, develop a new typology of violence, compare welfare regimes with violence regimes, and investigate the so-called Nordic paradox. 
  
  
• Between Romance and Sexual Commerce: Sugar Dating and the renegotiation of the boundaries between economy and intimacy (Funded by FORTE 2019-2022). In Sugardating, we investigate the commodification of sexuality and intimacy via the proliferation of Swedish sugar dating sites from a gender perspective. The material consists mainly of interviews (n=23) and surveys (n=100) with men and women who have experiences of sugar dating. 
  
  
• Honour-Based Violence and Oppression in Metropolitan Sweden: A Qualitative and Quantitative Study (Funded by Stockholm stad, Göteborg stad & Malmö stad 2017-2019, ORU 2020). In this study, a team of junior and senior multi-disciplinary researchers examine the expressions, prevalence and mechanisms of honour-related violence in Sweden, from an intersectional persective. The material consists of interviews (n=239) and questionnaires (n=6002). 

Teaching

Sofia Strid designs and delivers courses, lectures and supervision on all levels. She also develops and delivers workshops on gender equality, gender mainstreaming and gender-based violence for university staff, practitioners, and policymakers, for example within the EU Gender Equality Academy.

She currently supervises three PhD students with backgrounds in Gender Studies, Political Science and Media and Communication. Sofia Strid particularly welcomes research students and post docs with an interest in feminist violence studies, opposition against feminism, and gendered and intersectional perspectives on sustainability and the EU Green Deal.

Collaborations and service 

Sofia Strid is active in well-established European wide networks and collaborations, many of which have developed from her work with the European Women's Lobby (2006-2007), as Research Associate in the EU 6th framework funded QUING: Quality in Gender+ Equality Policy in Europe, and from her participation in the UNESCO Chair in Gender Research Group. 

She is the Chair of the Nordic Association for Feminist Research and Gender Studies, the board of NORA; the Chair of SO9: Gender-Based Violence Section of the ECPG of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR); a member of the EU COST Action on Femicide; and the European Representative in the International Sociological Association (ISA)  RC32: Women and Society.

Sofia Strid is an elected representative on the Faculty Board for Humanities and Social Sciences at Örebro University, the Örebro University representative in the Regional Administrative County's Resource Group on Violence against Women; an organising member of the annual National Gender Dialogue between researchers and Swedish Members of Parliament, and a founding member of the Regional Gender Dialogue.