Lunch seminar with Maj Grasten
Gender in Law and Political Economy
This lunch bag seminar introduces the Gender in Law and Political Economy (GLPE) project, which brings feminist analysis to the emerging field of Law and Political Economy (LPE). LPE examines how legal frameworks shape and sustain economic order, connecting law, markets, and social hierarchy across multiple scales. GLPE extends this analysis by showing how law not only regulates economic relations but actively produces gendered categories, subjects, and hierarchies, revealing how women and other marginalized groups experience differentiated vulnerabilities within economic and legal systems. The talk will outline LPE’s “ecology,” including its journals, networks, and research institutions, and explain how GLPE situates gender as a central analytic lens. GLPE’s approach conceptualizes law’s effects along three dimensions: what law does in shaping social and economic life, how it produces gendered subjectivities and relations, and where these dynamics unfold across local, national, and global contexts. These dimensions are illustrated through the study of Gender-Related Violence (GRV) in international law, highlighting ongoing debates over legal definitions, the interplay of structural and embodied harms, and the ways law both obscures and addresses gendered vulnerabilities. By linking feminist theory, political economy, and legal analysis, the seminar demonstrates how a gendered LPE perspective deepens our understanding of law as productive and distributive force.
Speaker bio
Maj Grasten is an external lecturer at Roskilde University and an independent consultant with a PhD in Law and Governance. Taking a sociological approach to law, she explores who makes law, how, and with what effects, focusing on law and political economy, law and gender, and the role of experts and knowledge production in transnational and international law. She co-directs the Law and Political Economy Collaborative Research Network at the Law and Society Association (LSA) and founded and recently chaired the European International Studies Association’s (EISA) Global Law and Politics section. Her consulting work includes engagements with the Danish and Swedish Ministries of Foreign Affairs, the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science, and the European Commission, with a focus on governance, rule of law, and civilian crisis management. Field experience spans the Western Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. She has been a guest lecturer at institutions including the University of Melbourne, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and Universidad de los Andes. Maj is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Law and Political Economy and co-editor of the Law and Political Economy e-Journal. Her publications include The Politics of Translation in International Relations (Palgrave, editor), and recent articles on the global care economy (Transnational Legal Theory), legal affordances in the platform economy (Environment and Planning A), and law and gender (Australian Feminist Law Journal). She is currently editing The Cambridge Companion to Gender in Law and Political Economy (Cambridge University Press).
Meeting ID: 649 4911 9734
Passcode: 904151