Sofie Tornhill

About Sofie Tornhill

I have been working at the School of Global Studies since autumn 2025. Prior to that, I worked at the Department of Social Studies at Linnaeus University and, before that, at Stockholm University and Freie Universität Berlin (two-year postdoctoral fellowship). I have a PhD in Political Science from Stockholm University, and I am an associate professor in Gender Studies.

Much of my research is in the field of feminist political economy and deals with governance and work in a broad sense: working conditions and mobilization for better working conditions in the globalized textile industry, global corporate social responsibility in relation to women's empowerment and entrepreneurship in marginalized, informal segments of the economy, unfree labor in connection with labor migration, and the governance of unpaid domestic work in gender equality and sustainable development policy. I have also investigated the conditions for achieving climate and sustainability goals in a project on grassroots initiatives for urban transition.

In addition to examining how gender equality has been embraced by influential economic and political actors, I am also interested in an opposite trend: the transnational mobilization against what is commonly referred to as “gender ideology” and also against LGBTQ rights.

Several of my projects bring together transnational agenda setting and local experiences, combining policy analysis with ethnographic methods and building on extended research stays in countries such as Nicaragua, Mexico, South Africa, Kenya.

Research projects

“Navigating anti-LGBTQ politics and homonationalism: Precarity and social support structures among Russian and Ugandan queer migrants in Sweden”, The Swedish Research Council, 2023.

“Making unpaid care and domestic work count: Frames, strategies and effects of new global partnerships”, The Swedish Research Council, 2022.

“Grassroots Initiatives for Energy Transition (GRIT)”, The Swedish Energy Agency, 2019.

“Between free and unfree labour. Labour market relations and the welfare society in Sweden 1880-2022”, The Swedish Research Council, 2019.

”Gender equality incorporated”,  Anna Ahlströms och Ellen Terserus stiftelse (two year post doc), 2013.

”Transnational Infrastructures of Business and Labor. The Politics of Competitiveness in Costa Rica and Nicaragua”, two year post doc within desiguALdades.net, Research Network on Interdependent Inequalities in Latin America, Freie Universität Berlin, 2010.

Teaching

I have extensive experience in teaching and course development in political science and gender studies, both in theoretical courses and methodology courses, with a particular focus on ethnography and text analysis. I have experience in supervising students at all levels, including PhD level.