Blog and news

Supporting welfare state expansion in the Global South: what role for development aid? ½-day seminar at Christiansborg April 30, 2024

University of Southern Denmark and Research & Action for Income Security (RAISE) invites everybody interested in welfare in the Global South to a half-day seminar at Christiansborg. Date: 30. april Time: 9.30-12.15 Location: Fællessalen, Christiansborg, Copenhagen

We are happy to welcome Bárbara Torres García from the 14th of April

Please join us for our webinar "Rethinking Social Protection and Social Contracts in the Context of the Gig Economy" on the 27th March 2024

Together with The Centre for Social Development in Africa (CSDA), University of Johannesburg, JUST SOCIETY, University of Southern Denmark hereby invite you to join our webinar on "Rethinking Social Protection and Social Contracts in the Context of the Gig Economy" on the 27th March 2024. Join us for a webinar where we delve into the findings from a comprehensive study on gig work and its implications for reshaping the social contract. This event is poised to contribute significantly to pivotal discussions surrounding SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth.

‘Air of Legality’ and Unjust Governance: Law Struggles in Andhra Pradesh, India

Blogpost by Siddardha Darla

Call for abstract for workshop June 2024

Open call for abstracts for the JUST SOCIETY workshop "Negotiating and Regulating Social Security for Workers on the Margin: Innovations from the Global South", 4-6 June 2024 at University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Odense, Denmark. Deadline: 25 March 2024.

COVID-19, Social Relief, and the Informal Sector: Attitudes toward fairness in the distribution of benefits in Zambia

Blog post by Hangala Siachiwena

Labor market dynamics and the gaps in social protection: some challenges for the Brazilian welfare system

Blog post by Vitor Menezes

Our Early Career Scholar Grant 2024 is now open for applications

JUST SOCIETY offers again early career scholars the opportunity to visit JUST SOCIETY and University of Southern Denmark as research fellows in 2024. Our call for applications is open now. Deadline for applying is November 30th, 2023.

Visit from Vitor Matheus Oliveira de Menezes from the 21st October to 21st November, 2023

Vitor Matheus Oliveira de Menezes is a senior analyst on education policies at Unibanco Institute (Brazil) and has a PhD in Sociology from University of São Paulo. He is also currently working as a consultant for UNESCO on the project “Promoção e Fortalecimento da Cidadania no Brasil”. Whilst here, Vitor will work on a project, which investigates the trends and characteristics of the Brazilian welfare system in the first half of the 2020s. This is a continuation of his PhD, which addressed an historicization of the Brazilian welfare system from the 1890’s to the 2010s.

Congratulation to all students who completed JUST SOCIETY: The rule of Law and Equal Access to Welfare, March-July 2023

The first cohort of students from Ilia State University and University of Brasilia has completed our course "JUST SOCIETY: The Rule of Law and Equal Access to Welfare". Ilia State University has been so kind and written a short article about the certificate ceremony in Tbilisi (including great pictures!).

NEW PUBLICATION: Social protection and state-citizen relations: A review of the literature

Read Marianne Ulriksen and Sophie Plagerson' s new article in Social Policy and Administration

We are happy to welcome both Hangala Siachiwena and Siddardha Darla for a research fellowship in September 2023

Present children and absent parents: Why we need to know more about skip-generation households in South Africa and beyond.

Blog post by Odile Mackett

Welcome to the students from India and South Africa

JUST SOCIETY: The Rule of Law and Equal Access to Welfare are now running again. This time with our second cohort with students from India and South Africa!

New article: JUST SOCIETY: An interdisciplinary course with justice in mind

Read more about JUST SOCITY's work in this new article published by University of Southern Denmark in relation to the universities work with the Sustainable Development Goals.

We are happy to welcome Odile Mackett for a research fellowship with JUST SOCIETY in April 2023

JUST SOCIETY's team member Christian Brown Prener recieves Carlsberg-funding

Christian is one of the 20 SDU researchers, who received funding by Carlsberg Fonden this time around. His project " Legal infrastructures: The Role of citizenship in global migration and mobility law" received the Internationalisation Fellowships-grant.

The implications of structural exclusion – Impediments to the advancement of dignity for South Africa’s ‘missing middle’

Blog post by Thandiwe Matthews

The Public Defender's Office as an institutional action against structural inequalities in Brazil

Blog Post by Alberto Carvalho Amaral

A successful world tour

The last months, the JUST SOCIETY team has been B-U-S-Y. We have finally(!) been able to visit our partners all around the world!

Merging law and politics to ensure equal access to welfare rights 12-14 September 2022

JUST SOCIETY hosts "Merging law and politics to ensure equal access to welfare rights" on the 12-14 September 2022 for a group of international scholars.

COVID-19 and the Rule of Law: Institutional letdown in India

Blog Post by Vivek N.D.

Invitation to online webinar on the 5th august 2022 11h-12.30h

Invitation to online webinar on the 5th august 2022 on 'How do citizen encounters with state policies (i.e. social protection, taxation) affect perceptions of rights and duties: A presentation and discussion of possible research agendas'. RSVP to jadep@uj.ac.za

Marianne Ulriksen will participate in Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy's workshop in June 2022!

We are happy to welcome Thandiwe Matthews for a research fellowship with JUST SOCIETY in May 2022

Chibuikem Nnaeme has been invited for a research fellowship with JUST SOCIETY in September 2022

Hangala Siachiwena will join JUST SOCIETY for a research fellowship in September 2022

We look forward to welcoming Alberto Carvalho Amaral to a research fellowship with JUST SOCIETY in August 2022

Frederik Waage’s opening remarks, day 2 of the JUST SOCIETY conference Addressing the Rule of Law and Welfare in the SDGs (9 November 2021)

Blog post by Frederik Waage

Understanding implementation barriers to accessing social protection

Blog post by Rasmus Schjødt

The Rule of Law in SDG 16

Blog post by Kristine Kjærsgaard

Our webinar "Legal challenges to equal access to justice and welfare rights" has been recorded and is available on our website

This webinar explores the legal challenges to equal access to justice, social rights and welfare rights in Brazil, Georgia, India, and South Africa. With presentations from each country, the webinar focuses on the direct and indirect discriminatory effects of particular legal frameworks and how these – despite often strong constitutional frameworks – risk perpetuating structural inequalities in social and welfare rights and within the criminal justice system. The four presentations explore how to resolve these existing barriers in ensuring equal protection of access to justice, social rights and welfare rights through e.g. open governance principles.

Did you miss the keynote sessions at our conference on 8-9 November?

The two keynote sessions from our conference "Addressing the Rule of Law and Welfare in the Sustainable Development Goals" on 8-9 November are now available on our website.

Experience the atmosphere from a JUST SOCIETY conference

On 8-9 November 2021, JUST SOCIETY hosted the conference, Addressing the Rule of Law and Welfare in the Sustainable Development Goals, together with partners. We had prominent keynote speakers who discussed how to achieve the SDGs globally and workshops with presentations by researchers and practitioners from all over the world. Finally, the conference allowed for hallway chats and networking. You now have the chance of experiencing the atmosphere from our conference.

JUST SOCIETY receives International Network Programme Grant

We are happy to announce that JUST SOCIETY has received the International Network Programme Grant from the Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science that aims to increase international cooperation by funding networking activities that can build the foundation for future project cooperation. With the project title “Merging law and politics to ensure equal access to welfare rights”, the grant will allow us to establish an international research network with legal and political scholars from leading universities in Brazil, India, and South Africa. We look forward to kick-starting the networking activities with a workshop at SDU in mid-2022. The project will run throughout 2022 with a number of shared workshops and research stays.

Our webinar "Politics of equal access to justice and welfare rights" is now available online

This webinar will provide a broad and comparative lens on the politics of equal access to justice and welfare rights. The webinar features three presentations that each give their perspective on the politics of equal access: from the contradictions between thick democratic and thin legal conceptions of access in India, the costs of political coordination and coalition building for inclusive social policy in Brazil, to the effects of access to social grants for voter choice in South Africa. Together, the presentations will allow for a cross-continental comparison of the implications of political systems and institutions for equal access to justice and welfare rights.

Marianne Ulriksen and Louise Munkholm attends the SDU Sustainable Development Goals Forum II on 1 October 2021

The aim of SDG Forum II is to provide a foundation for interdisciplinary research partnerships that can work on finding solutions to the major global and societal challenges that underlie the UN’s SDGs. These solutions indeed require a holistic as well as interdisciplinary collaboration. SDG Forum II is the result of SDU’s desire to facilitate the formation of these collaborations and is this time reserved for researchers. The forum offers a number of exciting initiatives such as facilitating networks across the research communities, facilitating idea generation for interdisciplinary research topics with research colleagues from different academic environments, provide insight into SDU’s support opportunities and last but not least, provide greater insight into the funding opportunities, which develops in line with the world’s focus on the 17 SDGs.

Our webinar "Administrative barriers to equal access to justice and welfare rights" is available online

This webinar explores specific ways in which the structure of public administration and civil servants’ strategies can serve as barriers to equal access to justice and welfare rights. The three presentations will discuss civil servants’ political neutrality in Georgia, health professionals’ policy implementation strategies in Brazil as well as institutional fragmentation in youth employment programmes in South Africa. In a panel discussion, the webinar will compare perspectives from the three countries and consider how to alleviate the identified administrative barriers to equal access to justice and welfare rights.

Visiting young scholar grant 2022 – Call for Applications

To support the academic careers of young scholars and to foster international cooperation, we would like to invite early career researchers for a research stay at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, Denmark. Eligible candidates are PhD students or scholars who finished their PhD within the last 6 years (excluding parental leave) in the broad field of welfare state/public policy research within political science or rule of law, Rechtstatt, constitutional law, or public and administrative law within legal scholarship. Research agendas with a focus on countries in the Global South are preferable. Deadline for applications is 31 October 2021.

Bringing the topic of democratic backsliding into the JUST SOCIETY-project

Blog post by Julie Holmegaard Milland

JUST SOCIETY is organising its second webinar series “Challenges to equal access to justice and welfare rights in the Global South” – tune in on the first webinar on 28 September

JUST SOCIETY is organising its second webinar series “Challenges to equal access to justice and welfare rights in the Global South” in which we dive into political, administrative and legal challenges to equal access to justice and welfare rights across our four partner countries in the Global South: Brazil, Georgia, India and South Africa. The key purpose of the webinars is to establish a cross-continental dialogue and highlight comparative perspectives on equal access to justice and welfare rights in societies today. The webinars will feature three presentations by researchers from JUST SOCIETY’s partner countries. In subsequent panel discussions, we discuss similarities and dissimilarities across countries and regions and consider how existing challenges to equal access to justice and welfare rights can be alleviated.

Critical reflections on the Nordic model – why should anyone care?

Blog post by Marianne Ulriksen

Marianne Ulriksen, Ane Karoline Bak and Louise Munkholm will attend the 22nd Biennial International Consortium for Social Development

The conference: The International Consortium for Social Development (ICSD) is being held online on 13-16 July. The themes for the conference are: POVERTY, INEQUALITY AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT: INNOVATIONS AROUND THE WORLD. Poverty and inequality are longstanding social challenges, greatly increased by the global Covid-19 pandemic, and overlaid with other social, economic and political crises, mass population movements, racial injustice, the digital divide, and climate change. This combination of circumstances has had devastating impacts on people’s everyday lives and their livelihoods in different parts of the globe, an impact which is unparalleled in modern history. How governments, societies and social development actors respond to this conjuncture will shape the direction of social development and human development outcomes for years to come.

Call for abstracts - deadline 15 August 2021

We are inviting all interested parts to our forthcoming conference ‘Addressing the Rule of Law and Welfare in the Sustainable Development Goals’ at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark, running over the course of November 8 and November 9, 2021. The conference approaches the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from the perspectives of the rule of law and welfare by examining the social, legal, and political institutions that are critical to ensure equal access to welfare services, and how these can be strengthened. Focus will be on the interplay between SDG 16 which concerns the building of effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions, and the welfare-related SDGs (such as SDGs 1, 3, 5, 8, and 10). The conference is hosted by JUST SOCIETY and will be held at the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences, University of Southern Denmark. The conference is co-organized by the Centre for Social Development in Africa, University of Johannesburg, and Access to Justice Europe. If interested in presenting your work, please find our Call for Abstracts enclosed and submit your abstract no later than August 15, 2021.

Our webinar "Public Administration in the Nordic Model" is available online

Our latest webinar "Public Administration in the Nordic Model" is now online along with our previous webinars.

Access: What it is and how to achieve it

Blog post by Louise Munkholm

Registration is now open our webinar on Taxation in the Nordic Model!

You can now sign up for our fourth webinar "Taxation in the Nordic Model", 16th June 2021! This webinar nuances the often-assumed role of taxation in the Nordic welfare states as highly redistributive based on a solidarity principle. It will discuss implications of recent decades’ tax reforms in the Nordic countries for inequalities and whether these experiences are relevant for the Global South. It does so by including inaugural presentations by Professor of Tax Law Åsa Gunnarsson and Professor of Political Science Michael Baggesen Klitgaard. We hope to see you!

Register for our third webinar on Public Administration in the Nordic Model May 27th 2021

Registration is now open for our next webinar "Public Administration in the Nordic Model" , May 27th. It will address the role of public administrative authorities in the Nordic model when it comes to ensuring equal access to justice and welfare for the individual citizen. Professor Bettina Lemann Kristiansen, Aarhus University and Associate Professor Matthias Döring, SDU will present perspectives, and Associate Professor Archil Abashidze and Associate professor Giorgi Meladze, Ilia State University, will be discussants!

Watch the webinar Criminal Justice and the Nordic Model online now!

Did you miss our previous webinar? No need to worry! The last webinars on "Criminal Justice and the Nordic Model" is now available online along with our previous webinar!

Advancing just societies through comparisons and dialogue

Blog post by Marianne Ulriksen

Louise Munkholm presents at Access to Justice Europe Network Seminar on 20 April 2021

In her presentation titled “Access to Justice in the Global South – A Literature Review”, Louise Munkholm gives an overview of the scope and content of the existing scholarship that addresses access to justice in global south countries. The review is part of the kick-off activities of the JUST SOCIETY-project that aims to illuminate the role of institutions in providing equal access to justice and welfare, thereby aligning closely with UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 16.

A culturally sensitive approach to human rights

Blog post by Siff Lund Kjærgaard

Sign up for our next webinar and watch the previous one online!

Registration is now upon for our next webinar: "Criminal Justice and the Nordic Model" on May 5th 2021, 13.00-14.15 (CET). Did you miss the first webinar? No need to panic. Is is now available online!

Jumping into the ocean of socio-legal research

Blog post by Louise Munkholm

Bringing the context to the forefront of developing a just society

Blog post by Ane Karoline Bak

The pillars of a just society

Blog post by Christian Prener

Look forward to the JUST SOCIETY Conference, Autumn 2021: “Addressing the Rule of Law and Welfare in the SDGs”

Christian Prener presents at iCourts Centre for Excellence at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen on 24th March 2021

The presentation is entitled: Citizenship Stripping: recent caselaw from the ECtHR and its tension with the moral justification of citizenship revocation as a means of national security or punishment and builds on his doctoral research concerning the rise of states’ practice of citizenship revocation in response to radicalized Islamic extremists and foreign fighters.

Video on JUST SOCIETY (in Danish)

See a short video about JUST SOCIETY explained by the project leader Marianne S. Ulriksen.

SDU wants to support societal institution in the Global South (in Danish)

Launch article from 20-12-2019.