• Director of studies for the department's master's courses and programmes (in Global Political Economy, Economic History, and International Relations).
• Course convener for the master thesis courses in economic history, and international relations, with and without specialization in global political economy.
• Course convener for the master course "Gendering Global Political Economy: Contemporary and Historical perspectives"

My research focuses on the social and economic history of Sweden and the Nordic countries during the late-modern and contemporary periods. It centers on three main areas:

1. Coercion in War Labour: Examining the use of various forms and degrees of force in wartime labour policies and practices.
2. Military Labour (including military service): Analysed through the lenses of gender, sexuality, and social history.
3. Money and Suffrage: Exploring how economic factors have restricted the voting rights of various groups.

Ongoing research projects:

• Military Conscription, Settler-Colonialism and Discrimination of the Sami People in Sweden 
• Between Free and Unfree labour. Labour Market Relations and the Welfare Society in Sweden 1880-2022
• The Defense of Consumption: Advertising, gender and citizenship in Sweden during World War II
• The Gender Neutral Conscription: Infrastructure, Implementation and Historical Context

Recently finished research projects:

• Universal Suffrage? Voting Restrictions and Disenfranchisement in Sweden after 1921
• Gender Equality, Diversity and Societal Security

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• The making of consumer patriotism: mobilizing Christmas in Sweden during the Second World War

  2024. Nikolas Glover, Klara Arnberg, Fia Cottrell-Sundevall. History of Retailing and Consumption, 1-17

  Article

  During the Second World War Swedish citizens were encouraged to send gifts to military personnel spending Christmas on duty. Orchestrated by a coalition of commercial and military interests as well as unions, women’s and employer’s organizations, the annual Frontline Christmas Gift campaigns blended traditional rituals of gift-giving with patriotic objectives. Analyzing archival documents and press clippings the study shows how this campaign both preserved and adapted consumer practices as well as gendered norms throughout the war. Primarily framing women as the givers and male soldiers as the receivers, the campaign reinforced gender structures and discourses while also subtly adapting them and embedding the whole exercise in Swedish consumer culture. The study contends that the Frontline Christmas Gift campaign not only maintained but also transformed public and private spheres during wartime. By extending the family-centric tradition of Christmas giving to a national level, it strengthened societal bonds and reinforced the Swedish wartime narrative of national unity and preparedness.

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• Selling soldiering: Marketisation, gender complementarity and the promise of military femininity in 1990s Sweden

  2024. Sanna Strand, Fia Cottrell-Sundevall. Gender and History

  Article

  This article examines the first large-scale attempts to recruit women as soldiers and officers in 1990s Sweden, focusing on the techniques and promises employed by the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF). Building on a wide range of documents and audiovisual sources, we demonstrate how the SAF utilised various marketing techniques, including advertisements and sponsorships, to attract and ‘sell’ soldiering to young women. Analysing these efforts through scholarship on neoliberal governmentality and gendered military identity, we argue that these strategies marked the onset of military marketisation, reflecting broader neoliberal trends in 1990s Sweden. Moreover, we show how the SAF's marketing techniques promised women a narrowly defined, complementary, feminine military identity that reinforced existing gender stereotypes in the name of gender equality. Our findings shed new light on the instability of gender equality policies deemed progressive and pioneering and, in contrast, the stability of the global racialised hierarchies that inscribe some nations as gender equality forerunners.

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• An unfinished suffrage reform: Voting rights in Sweden after the ‘democratic breakthrough’

  2024. Fia Sundevall, Annika Berg, Bengt Sandin. Scandinavian Journal of History

  Article

  This article examines the complex and non-linear process of democratization in Sweden after the introduction of so-called universal suffrage in 1921. The research questions address the excluded groups post-1921, the reasons for their exclusion, and the historical processes that led to further expansions of suffrage rights. The study shows that the expansion of suffrage rights in Sweden after 1921 was not guided primarily by a desire to broaden voter inclusion and/or rectify the limitations of the1921 legislation. Instead, the motivations were embedded in a more intricate and multifaceted tapestry of political aims and alliances as well as situational factors that included various social, economic, and cultural shifts. The article concludes that the history of suffrage in Sweden after 1921 has been one of continuous negotiations, transformations, and adaptations, and that this provides valuable insights for addressing challenges of political inclusion and representation in the present and future. 

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• A Nordic model of gender and military work? Labour demand, gender equality and women’s integration in the armed forces of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden

  2024. Anders Ahlbäck, Fia Sundevall, Johanna Hjertquist. Scandinavian Economic History Review 72 (1), 49-66

  Article

  This article traces the political process towards full formal integration of women in the military professions in Scandinavia and Finland, investigating the shifting roles played by military labour demands and politics of gender equality. It provides the first comparative overview of these developments in the Nordic region. The analysis demonstrates the importance of historical continuity in women’s military participation. Due to military labour demands, women were throughout the post-war decades recruited into a range of auxiliary, voluntary and hybrid capacities in the Scandinavian armed forces. The reforms opening the military professions to women in Denmark, Norway and Sweden in the 1970s were the outcome of a double crisis, as military needs for the regulation of these women’s organisational status coincided with new political demands for gender equality in the labour market. Corresponding reforms in Finland were delayed by the country’s lack of continuity in women’s military participation as well as its sufficient supply of male military personnel. A common Nordic model of gender and military work nonetheless emerged in the 1990s, marked by equal rights to military participation for women on a voluntary basis, combined with mandatory military conscription for men.

  Read more about A Nordic model of gender and military work? Labour demand, gender equality and women’s integration in the armed forces of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden

• Unpacking Coercion in Gendered War Labour

  2023. Julia Heinemann (et al.). Labor history 64 (3), 225-237

  Article

  While in recent decades there have been growing bodies of literature on gender and war, on war and military labor, and on various forms and degrees of labor coercion, rarely have these areas – gender, coercion and war labor – been analyzed together as intersecting and interdependent themes. The special issue on Gender, War and Coerced Labor aims to fill this gap, and this introduction to the issue will not only present the five papers but also establish the three intersecting themes uniting these papers. Together the introduction and the papers contribute toward larger debates about the place of coercion, of degrees of exploitation, and of free/unfree continuums in a variety of gendered war work. 

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• Försvarsmaktens personalförsörjning 1980–2020.: En kvantitativ studie över kvinnors antal och andel i militär utbildning respektive officersyrkena

  2023. Fia Sundevall, Therese Christoffersson, Karla Jonsson. Militärhistorisk Tidskrift (1), 15-34

  Article

  Women in Sweden gained formal access to both basic military training and professional military occupations in the 1980s. Yet, four decades later, the Swedish Armed Forces remain predominantly male-dominated. Achieving quantitative gender equality within the organization presents a significant challenge. This study compiles and contextualizes data on female participation in basic military training and in the professional officer category over the past four decades (1980–2020). Through this analysis, the study provides empirical insights into the persistent gender imbalance within the Swedish Armed Forces, prompting further research into the root causes of this disparity.

  Read more about Försvarsmaktens personalförsörjning 1980–2020.

Show all publications by Fia Cottrell-Sundevall at Stockholm University