Sanna Strand
Contact
Name and title: Sanna Strand
ORCID0000-0001-5804-2201 Länk till annan webbplats.
Workplace: Department of Economic History and International Relations Länk till annan webbplats.
Visiting address Universitetsvägen 10 A, plan 9
Postal address Institutionen för ekonomisk historia och internationella relationer106 91 Stockholm
About me
Sanna Strand is a researcher in International Relations. Strand holds a PhD in Peace and Development Research from the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg; an MSc in Global Security Studies from University of Glasgow and a BA in Global Studies from University of Gothenburg. Strand is an affilierad researcher at the Swedish Centre for Studies of Armed Forces and Society (CSMS) and the
Austrian Institute for International Affairs (oiip).
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, armament and recruitment, neoliberal governmentality and gender. 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 reshaping civil-military relations in liberal democracies.
As a post-doc at the Department for Economic History and International Relations, she conducted the research project The return and reimagination of military conscription in Europe. The project was financed by the Swedish Research Council and studied how political and military officials envisioned and justifed conscription in the 2010 and 2020s as well as how these efforts constructed strikingly different images of nation, citizenship and gender.
Since 2025, Strand is leading the Swedish Research Council-funded project Military conscription, settler-colonialism and discrimination of the Sami people in Sweden and conducts reseach within the project Psycological defence in the 21st century: distinguishing truth from threath.
Areas of Interest:
Military recruitment and retention
Militarism and militarization
Civil-military relations
Psycological defence and disinformation
Defense willingness ("Försvarsvilja")
Governmentality, neoliberalism and marketization