Kristina Anna Wejstål
About Kristina Anna Wejstål
I hold a PhD in International Law and work as a researcher at the University of Gothenburg and Södertörn University.
Ongoing Research Projects:
I am currently involved in two different research projects. The first, Migration as a ‘Hybrid Threat’, conducted together with Anja Franck and Annika Lindberg, examines the idea of migration being used as a form of 'hybrid warfare.' The project explores how such a framing of migration, as well as the EU’s New Pact on Migration, reshapes border control practices and affects the strategies and access to fundamental rights of people in need of protection.
The second project, Fencing off Europe, (postdoc project) is based at Södertörn University and investigates how physical border barriers such as fences and walls affect the enforcement of fundamental rights at the EU’s eastern borders. The study combines doctrinal methods with observations and interviews in Finland and Poland.
Previous Research:
My doctoral thesis At the border – EU Law, Asylum and the Spatialities of Fundamental Rights, critically examines and demonstrates how the ‘spatio-legal interaction’ of the EU border regime affects the conditions under which individual rights can be enforced at the EU’s external borders. Moreover, it explores how the EU’s external border can be understood, given the embeddedness of law in space and the asymmetry between where border control takes place and where the obligation to protect fundamental rights applies. The thesis addresses the Belgian embassy in Beirut and the border crossing point at Beni-Enzar between Morocco and the Spanish enclave Melilla through their spatial and legal construction – as ‘scenes of spatio-legal interaction’.
I also work with performing arts and have acted, directed, and written for the stage in a variety of projects. I have developed most of my artistic experience by working with ‘devising techniques’. Devising is an artistic method for the collective examination of a theme, and for the creation of a play without a pre-existing script. Through this method I have addressed e.g. the performative construction of masculinity (Do it like a dude, 2012), and the increase of far-right nationalist parties in Europe (Teater Smuts startar punkband – motståndsstrategier i ett fascistiskt Europa, 2014). All devising projects I have directed have been based on group interviews, workshops, and surveys. As an example, in ‘Det demokratiska projektet’ (2018) more than 200 persons of different ages and life-experiences participated in group interviews and workshops. The material collected through this process formed the basis for the creation of the play. The result was set on stage as an interactive play and exhibited at an art salon ‘Fosterlandet’ at Not Quite in Fengersfors, Sweden.
Research areas
- Fundamental rights law
- EU migration and border control law
- International law
- Law and Space
Teaching areas
- Fundamental rights law
- EU law
- Migration Law
- Swedish public law
- Law for social work