For the time being, Strand is primarily supervising BA and MA students. At her previous position at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Strand convened a class titled Security and Conflict in a Transforming World as well as lectured and supervised broadly within the fields of Critical Security Studies and International Relations. She has also lectured on Postcolonial and Feminist theories of International Relations at the New School, New York.

Strand’s research focuses on intersections between war, military power and recruitment, neo-liberal governmentality and gendered and sexualized (soldier) identities. In her PhD thesis, she explored how the Swedish deactivation of conscription in favour of a professional, all-volunteer force in 2010 transformed the image of the Swedish Armed Forces in society. More broadly, the thesis addressed how military missions, mandates and careers are rendered attractive and legitimate to citizens as well as how commercials, advertisements, interactive media channels and other marketing strategies are shaping civil-military relations in liberal democracies. As a post-doc at the Department for Economic History and International Relations, she is conducting the research project The return and reimagination of military conscription in Europe. The project is financed by the Swedish Research Council and studies how political and military officials envision and justify conscription as well as how these efforts construct different images of nation, citizenship and gender.

Areas of Interest:

• Critical Military Studies
• Feminist International Relations
• Critical Security Studies
• Governmentality and neoliberalism
• Civil-military relations
• Military recruitment and retention
• Militarism and militarization
• Marketization and nation branding

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Embodying Military Muscles and a Remasculinized West: Influencer Marketing, Fantasy, and “the Face of NATO”

  2022. Elsa Hedling, Emil Edenborg, Sanna Strand. Global Studies Quarterly 2 (1)

  Article

  In 2018, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) carried out Trident Juncture, its largest military exercise since the Cold War. The event was promoted on social media featuring Lasse Matberg as “the face of NATO.” Matberg is an Instagram influencer, model, and lieutenant in the Royal Norwegian Navy, with an impressive physique and Viking looks. He frequently appears on NATO’s social media accounts and lends his own platform to share activities such as working out with the Secretary-General. Drawing on the notion of “fantasmatic logics”, we study how visual narratives of influencer marketing can contribute to making war preparations appear normal, void of political significance and even desirable. The figure of Lasse Matberg is read in conjunction with international rearmament and increasing geopolitical antagonism bound up with ideas of “traditional masculinity” and “feminization.” We argue that the muscular yet ambiguously “soft” figure of Lasse Matberg projects a symbolic remasculinization of the West, operating through a fantasmatic logic that seemingly reconciles the contradiction between a West, which is imperial and militarily muscular on the one hand and caring, democratic, and progressive on the other. By shedding light on NATO's use of influencer marketing to promote a military exercise, this article contributes novel insights into the ways in which the figure of the NATO soldier and NATO military buildup are produced as appealing, allowing an ambivalent gendered geopolitical imaginary to emerge.

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• Periods, Pregnancy, and Peeing: Leaky Feminine Bodies in Swedish Military Marketing

  2022. Maria Stern, Sanna Strand. International Political Sociology 16 (1), 1-21

  Article

  The notion of “leaky” female bodies has long rationalized the exclusion of women from military service. Yet, in an attempt to bolster enlistments by appealing to women, the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) embarked on a marketing strategy that aims to break with gender stereotypes in order to fill its ranks. Most notably, in a 2018 recruitment campaign, an SAF billboard posed the question “Can I have my period in the field?” This article probes how the leaky female body is mobilized in SAF marketing campaigns and outreach activities. While remarkable for their commitment to gender parity, we aver that there is more going on in these campaigns that seemingly render women's bodies normal and unproblematic as military bodies than a move toward gender equality. The representations of female soldiering bodies that emerge reproduce a familiar form of militarism that promotes the necessity of a battle-ready military corps that is predictable, and poised for warring. Moreover, these explicitly feminist SAF campaigns also beckon with the possibility of becoming that transcends the bodily limitations of sex/gender in civilian as well as military life, in war as well as in peace—to become perhaps something/someone/somewhere else that only military service can offer.

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• Solving ‘the Uniform Issue’: Gender and Professional Identity in the Swedish Military

  2022. Sanna Strand, Alma Persson, Fia Sundevall. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies

  Article

  This article contributes empirical knowledge about the shifting ways in which the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) has articulated and addressed ‘the uniform issue’, that is, matters concerning servicewomen’s access to adequate uniforms and other equipment, since the 1980s. Drawing on analytical tools employed within post-structural policy analysis, we demonstrate how ‘the uniform issue’ has gone from being articulated as a problem for servicewomen, and to be solved by servicewomen, to a problem for the SAF in its pursuit to become an attractive employer and a legitimate public authority. By shedding light on how ‘the uniform issue’ has been problematized in shifting ways since Swedish women first were allowed to serve in all military positions, this article also contributes important insights into broader scholarly debates about workplace discrimination, gender equality, and gendered occupational identities in military work.

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• The birth of the enterprising soldier: governing military recruitment and retention in post-Cold War Sweden

  2022. Sanna Strand. Scandinavian Journal of History 47 (2), 225-247

  Article

  The promise of becoming a normal or even ideal citizen of the nation-state has long been central to the politics of military recruitment and retention. However, what this promise has entailed, and how the image of the soldier has been constructed, varies across time and place. This article illustrates and historicizes the emergence of a distinct soldier image, closely associated with the neoliberal ideal of responsible, active, and entrepreneurial citizenship, in the context of Sweden. The paper adopts a genealogical approach and views ‘the enterprising soldier’ through the contemporary history of military reforms in post-Cold War Sweden. Central to these reforms was the move from universal conscription for men to a recruitment policy that gradually came to rely on voluntarism for all, a shift that culminated in the introduction of an all-volunteer force in 2010. To illustrate the significance and potential appeal of ‘the enterprising soldier’, the paper exemplifies how this image has been promoted and presupposed in three sites: (1) military recruitment materials, (2) military career planning schemes, and (3) military-private sector partnership programmes. Through this genealogical endeavour, this paper contributes new insights into how the image and promise of soldiering has transformed alongside neoliberal reforms of the armed forces.

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• Löften om manlighet: Feministiska perspektiv på militär rekrytering

  2021. Sanna Strand. Feministiska perspektiv på global politik, 223-236

  Chapter

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• Wokeness and weakness: Why women in (fitting) military uniforms are ridiculed

  2022. Sanna Strand. Critical Military Studies, 1-6

  Article

  Despite decades of military gender integration and women’s increasing presence in military ranks globally, military uniforms and equipment are still designed after the measurements of a ‘standard male body’ in many countries. Servicewomen are therefore – on a group level – less likely to be provided with fitting, functional, and safe military gear. So why is it taking so long to provide servicewomen with adequate uniforms and equipment? US right-wing TV host Tucker Carlson may inadvertently have provided one answer to such a question. 

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Show all publications by Sanna Strand at Stockholm University