“Do not start comments with self-doubts!”

23. August 2024

When did you decide to stay in academia and to become a professor?

Long before doing my PhD. I took an undergrad course in political theory with two (male) teachers (now colleagues) who seemed to have so much fun when discussing with each other, I decided I wanted to have the same kind of opportunities and thus needed to stay in academia.

What do you like the most about being a professor?

That I get to read and write (i.e., do my hobbies and learn more) for a job -and that I can go on sabbaticals and workshops at really cool places every once in a while! Also, that I have amazingly clever colleagues and have lots of fun with them. And to teach good students is always also a real mood booster!

What was one of the biggest challenges during your academic career? And how did you cope with it?

When I went public in the spring of 2020 about being a critic of Sweden's controversial covid approach, I felt rather alone in academia for taking this stance, and there were some personal conflicts, as well as public ridicule on social media of me by people connected to research funding. This had to with the fact that I experienced that many were caught up in a nationalist fervor at the time, defending whatever Sweden was doing at any cost (I've since shown that nationalism was indeed involved, see my "Rallying around the unwaved flag: national identity and Sweden's controversial covid strategy" (2023), co-authored with Jonas Larsson Taghizadeh, published at West European Politics. For a while I thought I must leave academia (because shutting up about my opinions was not an option for me). I coped with this by finding friends and networks that did support me, and by ending up researching the whole situation and writing a book about it in order to make sense of it (the book came out in late 2021 in Swedish). I also left Sweden for a year between 2020 and 2021 to stay in Oxford and get an outsider perspective on it all.

You are mother of two. How do you tackle both career and family?

Oh dear, that is a good question. I guess my main answer is three-fold: First, I have an extremely responsible and feminist partner, Ralph, who is also in academia and takes on (often more than) half of the parental responsibility for our daughters. Secondly, I have a very engaged mother and mother-in-law, so our daughters spend lots of time with their grannies (one of them is just about to move 500 m away from us for that purpose!). Thirdly, Sweden really does have a very good system with long parental leave, daycare, after school activities, paid take care of sick kids days etc. Ralph and I have shared parental leave 50/50 since both our kids were four months (with kid nr 1 he took even more, since we were in Oxford and I was at Nuffield College at the time) and thus remain in the loop at both work and at home.

Which advice would you like to give young female scholars?

To not put themselves down and start comments with self-doubt and imposter syndrome give-aways like 'I'm no expert of course, but...' etc. And don't apologize for yourself, like I see my female (but never male) PhD students do all the time! Oh, and find a responsible, caring, and feminist partner who really values that you are an intellectual and high achieving person, and who doesn't mind doing their share of the domestic duties because they love seeing you shine.