Opening the discussion about adoption from care in Finland – wrong place, right time?

Petra Järvinen (2024)

The Centre for Research on Discretion and Paternalism (DIPA)

  Blogpost by: Petra Järvinen, Doctoral Researcher, Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, and visiting scholar at the Centre for Research on Discretion and Paternalism (DIPA) in April and May 2024. Finland’s Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s Governments Programme took a much-awaited initiative to advance the role of adoption from care in Finland. However, the placement of this initiative […]

Advisory Board

Adrian Jjuuko


o   Law. Uganda (PhD from Pretoria). LawTransform partner.
o   Director of HRAPF, lectures at Makerere University.
o    LHBTIQ+ rights; human rights broadly; research & practice.

Alicia Yamin

o   Law + public health. USA. Argeninean background. LawTransform partner

o   Harvard Law School and Partners in Health 

o   Health, reproductive rights, human rights broadly, research & practice

 Benjamin Franta

o   Law

o   Senior Research Fellow in Climate Litigation at the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme and the founding head of the Climate Litigation Lab

o   Climate litigation, global environmental governance 

Leticia Barrera

o   Anthropologist. Legal anthropology, courts, transitional justice, bureaucracy and law, socio-legal theory. 

o   CONICET (Argentinean science council) researcher. Univ. of Buenos Aires.

Malcolm Langford

o   Lawyer with social science orientation. Australian. University of Oslo. 

o   Former co-director, central to the establishment of LawTransform.

o   Broad research interests in empirical legal studies

Bo Rothstein

o   Sociology of law. University of Copenhagen

o   Head of ICOURTS

Øyvind Ravna

o   Lawyer (Professor Universtiy of Tromsø). New to LawTransform.                                                                                              

o   Sami law, indigenous rights.

 Ruth Rubio Marin

o   Professor of law, University of Sevilla / European University Institute / UNESCO chair, Univeristy of Andalucia. LawTransform partner.

o   Gender, constitutionalism

Valentine Moghadam

o   Sociology, Northeastern University, USA. New to LawTransform. 

o   Focuses on women in developmentglobalization, feminist networks, and female employment in the Middle East,

Varun Gauri  

o   Economist, USA, Indian heritage. LawTransform relation

o   Teaches at Princeton, Previously Senior economist, World Bank research dep.

o   Behavioural economics, global poverty, health, child rights, ethics

PHD course – sex and politics in a global perspective

In spring 2025, SKOK (center for women`s and gender research), LawTransform and Skeivforsk will organize a cross-disciplinary, combined master and PhD course about the dynamics between sex and politics in a global perspective.

We invite PhD and master students in Bergen to a cross-disciplinary course on dynamics between sex and politics in a global perspective.

Sexuality, LGBTQ issues in particular, have become a politically hot topic across the globe. Queer and trans rights and the LGBTQ movement are increasingly instrumentalized or co-opted towards various political ends. In this course, we are particularly interested in how the divisive “pink line”, as South-African journalist and writer Mark Gevisser calls it, functions in different geographical and political contexts.

The “pink line” points to how queer and trans issues are being weaponized in the new cultural wars, dividing those clamping down on LGBT rights and freedoms on the one hand, and those accepting or even priding themselves on sexual and gender diversity on the other.

The “pink line” serves geopolitical purposes, as well as dividing domestic politics and polarizing public debates, often with devastating consequences for those at the receiving end of the cultural wars.

The course focuses mainly, but not exclusively, on dynamics of polarization and how queer and trans issues are used as pretext for violence, either by pursuing a strategy of homonationalism, pinkwashing and civilizing mission that sanitizes Islamophobia, or by accusing gender and sexual minorities and LGBT legislations for threatening the natural, national and civilizational order.

Either way, the “pink line” is part of bigger political projects, most often authoritarian projects of consolidating power. And in many cases, the aim is not merely to limit various minority peoples’ equal access to rights, but to dismantle or capture democratic institutions and set up new forms of authoritarian democracy – what Kim Scheppele aptly calls the “Frankenstate”.

At the same time, there are modes of political activism and movements that keep focusing on radical-progressive coalition politics, politics of hope and politics of queer joy – indicative of the co-constitutive relationship between sex and politics.

We encourage students to contribute with theoretical or empirically based analyses related to the overall course description and literature.

General information

Each student must familiarise themselves with the course literature and take active part in discussions and attend at least 75 percent of regular lectures/seminars and the whole 3-day gathering, including parallel sessions with student presentations.

The course programme will be available in January, prior to the deadline for registration.

Course dates: Tuesdays 14.15 – 16.00, – 18th of February, 4th of March, 18th of March, 1st of April, 22nd of April, May 6th + a three-day gathering the 21-23 of May 2025.

Registration is required. Deadline: Monday 13 January 2025.

Questions can be directed to professor Randi Gressgård (randi.gressgard@uib.no)

Registration link -> here

The Supreme Court of Argentina

Andrea Castagnola, Alejandro Chehtman, Sergio Muro (2024)

Constitutional Reasoning in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Critical Analysis

We are pleased to introduce you the chapter written by our fellow Andrea Castagnola and her colleagues in the book “Constitutional Reasoning in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Critical Analysis”. This chapter analyzes the constitutional reasoning of the Argentine Supreme Court, focusing on its institutional, historical, and legal contexts. Argentina offers a unique study […]

Desegregation of education – Czech Republic

We invite you to our breakfast seminar with Jakub  Konečný, the Chech Republic Public Defender of Rights The lecture will be focused on the desegregation of education in the Czech Republic, particularly with regard to how the Office of the Ombudsman has been involved in addressing this human rights issue.

Judicial activism in Paraguay: a reactive form of compensatory justice

Andrea Castagnola, Gabriela Bonzi, Shirley Franco and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán (2024)

Judicial Activism in Comparative Perspective

A publication by Andrea Castagnola and her colleagues. The article examines the role of constitutional justice in countries with low judicial independence, focusing on Paraguay as a case study. Scholars typically expect courts in such environments to exhibit weak and deferential behavior due to close ties with ruling elites or fear of retaliation. However, Paraguay’s […]

Domesticating human rights: restricting child marriage in Spain

Kerstin Hamann (2024)

The International Journal of Human Rights

Kerstin Hamann is University Pegasus Professor,  Associate Dean University of Central Florida and Global Fellow for LawTransform. Her research focuses on the political role of organized labor in Western Europe, Spanish politics, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. ABSTRACT Child marriage, considered a human rights violation, occurs not just in the Global South, but […]

Los derechos de las mujeres y el rol de la Corte Suprema de Paraguay

Shirley Franco, Andrea Castagnola (2024)

ESTUDIOS CONSTITUCIONALES

An article on Los derechos de las mujeres y el rol de la Corte Suprema de Paraguay by Andrea Castagnola. Andrea Castagnola is an expert in the areas of transparency, justice, institutions, accountability, and fighting corruption. She was assistant professor at Flacso-Mexico and holds a Post-Doc in Quantitative Methods from the University of Bergen, Norway. She also holds […]

Judicial Tenure and Retirements

Aníbal Pérez-Liñán, Andrea Castagnola (2023)

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Judicial Behaviour

A chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Judicial Behaviour on Judicial Tenure and Retirements by Andrea Castagnola, adjunct professor at the University Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires & Consultant on justice, the rule of law and transparency for the IADB and World Bank and her colleague Aníbal Pérez-Liñán. Abstract Judicial tenure is often perceived […]

Core team

Siri Gloppen

Director (on leave November 2024 – July 2025)
Professor of Political Science (Department of Government) and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Bergen

Lise Rakner

Acting Director
Professor of Political Science, Department of Goverment, University of Bergen

Liv Tønnessen

Director
Senior Researcher at Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI)

Lara Côrtes

Coordinator
Advisor, UiB