Moa Bladini
About Moa Bladini
Moa Bladini is Associate Professor (Docent) and Senior Lecturer in Criminal Law. Her research spans criminal law in the broad sense and integrates both substantive and procedural perspectives in order to examine how legal norms are operationalised in practice. Her work in substantive criminal law has often focused on sexual violence against women, encompassing violations in both offline and online contexts. Her research on online-related violence has, in particular, addressed questions of gender equality and freedom of expression. Part of her scholarship is interdisciplinary and methodologically grounded in courtroom studies, focusing on key legal actors such as judges and other professionals, as well as the subjects of criminal law/proceedings (the perpetrator/defendant and the victim/complainant). Bladini’s research sits at the intersection of justice, gender equality, and the right to a fair trial, and includes studies of how ideals such as objectivity, autonomy, and rationality are enacted and negotiated in criminal proceedings.
Bladini is actively engaged in national, Nordic, and international networks and collaborations. She is a co-founder and member of the research group EuroJudge together with Professor Ulrika Andersson (Lund University), Francesco Contini (IGSG-CNR, Bologna, Italy), Professor Zoltán Fleck (ELTE, Hungary), and Associate Professor Sophie Turenne (University of Cambridge, UK). Together with colleagues from the University of Gothenburg and Lund University, she has also initiated a collaboration with, among others, Professor Fiona Vera-Gray and Professor Liz Kelly (London Metropolitan University), and Professor Clare McGlynn (Durham University, UK). She was the co-host for Prof. Jennifer Nedelsky Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Canada, for the Carl and Thecla Lamberg Visiting Professorship for the academic year 2024/25. She has been a visiting researcher at the University of Bologna and at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law in Freiburg. She has co-organised several Nordic conferences, including Law and Gender 2023, the Nordic Workshop on Criminal Law 2024, and multiple workshops within the Nordic Women’s Network in Criminal Law. Together with Associate Professor Matilda Arvidsson, she has co-organised the seminar series Feminist Voices in Law since spring 2024.
She is also active beyond academia, with recurring engagements as a lecturer for, among others, courts, prosecution offices, politicians, upper secondary schools, and organisations on topics such as Sweden’s consent-based rape law, judicial autonomy, and online harassment. She is Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of Straffrättsbloggen (the Criminal Law Blog) and serves as a member of the Council for the Swedish Courts Academy (Domstolsakademin).
She is Head of the Criminal Law Section and a member of the Professors’ Committee at the Department of Law. Moa Bladini is the recipient of the Birger Karlsson Award in Scientific Excellence for 2025, awarded by the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburg (KVVS).
Current research projects
2026-2030 Att bevisa våldtäkt - Från polisanmälan till dom [Evidence of Rape - From Police report to Verdict] (participant) with Åsa Wettergren and Sara Uhnoo (PI), Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg. The project is funded by Vetenskapsrådet [Swedish Research Council].
2025–2027 Blind Justice? Comparing Voluntary and Coercive Rape Legislations (participant) with Prof. Åsa Wettergren (PI), Ass. Prof. Sara Uhnoo, Ass. Prof. Anton Törnberg, and Dr Hans Ekblad, doctoral candidate Hanna Feige, all affiliated with the Department of Sociology and Work Science at the University of Gothenburg. The project is funded by Forte.
2023-2026 Autonomy of the Judge in theory and practice – strengthening the independent judiciary, (Bladini is PI) together with Dr Wanna Svedberg Andersson and Associate Professor Sara Uhnoo. The project is funded by Vetenskapsrådet [Swedish Research Council].
Finished research projects
2020-2024 Rape or consent? Effects of the new rape legislation on legal reasoning and practice. (participant) PI was Prof. Åsa Wettergren, and co-researcher was Ass. Prof. Sara Uhnoo at the Department of Sociology and Work Science at the University of Gothenburg. The project was funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.
2021-2023 Profiling Nordic Perpetrators of Gendered Online Abuse: Who, Why and How to Curb the Harm. (Bladini was PI for the Swedish part) Participating researcher was Dr Wanna Svedberg Andersson, under the regime of NORDREF. Funded by NIKK.
2020-2021 GENHA Hate Speech, Gender, Social Networks and Political Parties (participant) with Prof Eva-Maria Svensson, Department of Law, University of Gothenburg. PI was Prof. Noelia Igareda González, at Universitat Autonoma Barcelona (UAB). Funded by the programme Justice Programme (JUST) Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (REC).
2017-2019 To Construct Objectivity - Emotions in Legal Decision-making (participating) with Prof. Åsa Wettergren, Department of Sociology and Work Science at University of Gothenburg, Prof. Stina Bergman Blix, Department of Sociology, Uppsala University (PI), and Dr. Nina Törnqvist, the Department of Criminology at Stockholm University. Funded by the Swedish Research Council. The project was part of a larger comparative research project JUSTEMOTIONS, led by Professor Stina Bergman Blix, funded by ERC under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme 2018-2023.
2016-2017 Hatred and Threats Online - a Survey of the Legal Regulation in the Nordic Countries from a Gender Equality Perspective (Bladini was the PI) on behalf of NIKK and the Nordic Council of Ministers.
Supervision PhD Students
Ongoing
Assistant supervisor since September 2015 to doctoral candiate Mikael Bernardini working on a reseach project titled Criminalization of poverty - A Study of Criminal Law's Individualization, Delineation and Development. Planned for final seminar in the end of 2023.
Assistant supervisor since autumn 2021 to doktoral candidate (in sociology) Marie Sundström working on the project The Real Rape - Application of the Swedish Rape Legislation 1965-2022 . The project is financed by the Swedish Crime Victim Authority and is part of the project Rape or Consent.
Assistant supervisor since autumn 2023 to doctoral candidate Thomasine Franke Rydén, working on a project Between Democracy and Repression - legal changes in uncertain times, at the Department of Law, Umeå University.
Assistant supervisor since spring 2024 to doctoral candidate Erik Berglund, working on a project Sexual Offenses, at the School of Behavioural, Social and Legal Sciences, Örebro University.
Finished
Assistant supervisor since June 2013 to doctoral candidate Erik Björling (now Dr.) working on a project with the working title A legal narratological study of argumentation and legal expression of civil process.
Teaching
Bladini’s teaching portfolio encompasses both criminal law and criminal procedure, and she has many years of experience as course convenor at introductory as well as advanced levels. Her teaching includes lectures in large- and small-group formats, seminars, supervision of student theses, and assessment in a variety of forms. In addition to teaching within criminal law and criminal procedure, she contributes to other courses, mainly within the field of legal theories and methods. Bladini also supervises and examines master students’ thesises.
She teaches primarily on the law programme at the University of Gothenburg, but also undertakes recurring teaching appointments on the law programmes at Karlstad University and Lund University. For many years, her main teaching responsibilities were based within the law programme at Lund University.
Bladini also regularly contributes to teaching at a doctoral-level.
She has additionally held a recurring teaching appointment on the course The Judicial Role (Domarrollen), delivered by the Swedish Courts Academy (Domstolsakademin).
On other web sites
Research areas
- Criminal Law
- Criminal Procedure Law
- Theory and Methodology in Legal Research
- Critical legal theory, and Gender theory
Teaching areas
- Criminal Law
- Criminal Procedure Law
- Legal theory and research methods
Selected publications
Bladini, Moa & Svensson, Eva-Maria (2025) Rethinking Anti Gender Hate Speech. Legislation and Public Policy Making, Routledge.
Wettergren, Åsa, Bladini, Moa och Uhnoo, Sara (2025), Challenging Legal Core Values - Consent-based Rape Legislation in Practice, Bristol University Press.
Bladini, Moa (2025) From Distance to Embodiment. Objectivity in Swedish Rape Trials, in Frontiers in Sociology, 10 (1461018), 12
Uhnoo, S., Erixon, S. & Bladini, M. (2024) The wave of consent-based rape laws in Europe. The wave of consent-based rape laws in Europe, in International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, 77.
Moa Bladini & Stina Bergman Blix (2022) 'The Judge under Pressure. Fostering objectivity by leaving the myth of dispassion' i Giannoupoulos, D. & McDermott Rees, Y. (Red.) Challenges to judicial independence in times of crisis, in Proceedings of the British Academy' volume on Judicial Independence 2022.
Moa Bladini & Wanna Svedberg Andersson (2020) 'Swedish rape legislation from use of force to voluntariness – critical reflections from an everyday life perspective', in Special Issue on Rape laws in the Nordic Countries, in Bergen Journal of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice 8(2) 95-125, 2021. https://boap.uib.no/index.php/BJCLCJ/article/view/3241/3133
Moa Bladini (2020) ’Silenced Voices. Online Violence Against Women as a Threat Against Democracy’ in Eva-Maria Svensson (Red.) Special Issue Exploiting Justice in a Transformative Swedish Society, Nordic Journal of Law and Society 3 (2) 2020, pp. 1-42. https://journals.ub.umu.se/index.php/njolas/article/view/156