I’m a legal and interdisciplinary scholar based in Lund, Sweden. I hold a position as an associate professor and senior lecturer in law at the University of Gothenburg. I study how law, technology, flora and fauna interact.
I am particularly interested in how humans and non-humans, technologies, and institutions produce and embody law and justice. To this end, I use qualitative research methods to better understand these phenomena.
I regularly share insights with academics, professionals, and the wider public.
I am an editor of the Routledge book series on AI, Law and Society, a co-editor in chief of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, a community editor of the Frontiers in AI: Law and Technology journal, and a member of the editorial boards of the Feminist Legal Studies journal, the International Journal of Law in Context journal and the journal Law, Technology and Humans.
An award-winning legal scholar, my research has been funded by e.g. the Swedish Research Council (Sweden), Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Sweden), Vinnova (Sweden’s National Innovation Agency), WASP-HS (humanities and social science AI research, Sweden). and Horizon 2020 (the European Commission). I have been awarded the Swedish Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities Bernadotte fellowship (2019) for my interdisciplinary work in the social sciences and humanities, and the Albert Wallin Prize in Scientific Excellence (2024), awarded by the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburg (KVVS), Sweden, for my interdisciplinary work on AI, law and feminist, de-colonial history.
Before entering academia I acted as a Law Clerk and Junior Judge at Lund District Court, Sweden, and as a Human Rights and Gender specialist in the Non Governmental Organization sector and at United Nations agencies.
I am currently (fall 25) a visting researcher at the Faculty of Law, Lund University.
I am the series editor for the Routledge book series on AI, Law and Society. To know more about the series, and the critical take on AI and law that it takes, read more here.
Photo by Ben Wicks on Unsplash
As part of my research and posthuman feminist practice of inter- and intra-species kinship I work on gardens and human-plant relations. Read more on my scholarship on Gardens of Law, listen in on my conversation with Anna Grear on human-plant relations, and enjoy my essay on the jurisprudence of gardens.
Since the hashtag #MeToo overtook social media, in 2017, the movement has reached but not managed to change all that much in academia. As someone who researches and give public talks on #MeToo in Academia, I have spent some time and effort trying making a change for the better. Read more on it here.
Photo by Mélodie Descoubes on Unsplash
In this monthly online seminar series we give a platform to feminist voices in law, with an aim of bringing feminist legal scholars and practitioners together. For accessing our seminar program, as well as recordings of previous seminars, read more here.
AI, Law and Non-Fascist Living/Knit, Code, Resist
How does knitting, AI, law, and women’s history of embodied and performative resistance come together? In this research project I explore relations between coding as women’s knitted secret coded messages in the resistance movements during World War II, and everyday resistance to contemporary forms of surveillance and fascism(s) through knitting and knitted ”anti-surveillance” knitwear. Read more here.
Dr Matilda Arvidsson 