#MeToo Activism as Pragmatic Justice Seeking

Seminar

Date: Thursday 1 February 2024

Time: 13.00 – 14.30

Location: C603

Docent, Senior lecturer and Deputy head of department Lena Karlsson from the department of Gender Studies at Lund University will be talkning about her current research project

As #MeToo activists took their testimonies of sexual harm outside the legal arena to seek justice, the #MeToo movement has commonly been framed as pitting informal justice-seeking against formal law. This presentation is based on qualitative interviews with Swedish #MeToo activists and focuses on their experiences of justice seeking. It asks the key question: what does justice look like for #MeToo participants? The interviews convey how acts of justice seeking are plural, spanning both legal and extra-legal terrains, as well as temporally long-lasting and contextually shifting.
 

 

About Lena Karlsson 

Current  research and teaching

In the main, my research interests revolve around representation, narration and democracy.  My key focus has been autobiographical narration, both in terms of representation and reception. What and whose story is given legitimacy? How? 

In my most recent research projects I have analyzed personal narratives of sexual violence. How are witness narratives used to mobilize for social change in digital media campaigns against sexual violence? How are digital witness narratives produced, circulated and received? In my ongoing research project, The #metoo momentum and its aftermath: digital justice seeking and societal and legal responses, I investigate understandings of justice and desired justice responses that emerge through #metoo witness narratives. Read more about her research. 

Information from Lund University 

 

The seminar will be in English.