Anthropologist with a specialization in long-term social change in postcolonial Africa. Recent work focuses on the interaction between law and politics in state formation. Supplementary interests in epistemic decolonization, and in the legal frameworks around extractivist economies, especially in connection with indigenous communities.

Lisa Grans holds a PhD in Public International Law from Åbo Akademi University (2018) and has published extensively on the issue of women’s rights, with a particular focus on violence against women. Her expertise also includes the prohibition of discrimination, the prohibition of torture and linguistic rights. Grans has worked practically for over 20 years with promoting the human rights of women and other disadvantaged groups in cooperation with the relevant governmental bodies in countries such as Georgia, Kosovo and Turkey, having been based in the latter two.

Projects

Prevention of honour-related violence through the lens of the right to physical and psychological integrity

My research interests include internal and cross-border displacement in Sub-Saharan Africa, politics of belonging, identity building and state formation. In my ethnographic Doctoral Study I use the return migration of Zimbabweans from neighbouring Southern African countries as an avenue for exploring the dynamics of returnee urban emplacement.

I am currently writing my doctoral thesis on the motivations of Finnish foreign relations towards Southern African states in the latter part of the 1980s. The primary aim of this research is to examine why the relations towards African states were promoted and what were the reasons for doing so. My previous scientific publications focus on Finnish foreign relations and policies towards Southern African states during the Cold War period, and modern cultural impacts of sports video games. My scientific interests include Nordic historical approaches on development cooperation, Finnish foreign, security, and domestic policy issues during the Cold War, African countries in international forums during the Cold War, and modern cultural impacts of sports in society.

Over 48 million people were internally displaced due to armed conflict, generalized violence or human rights violations, according to Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), at the end of 2020. The concept of internally displaced persons (IDP) can be understood as persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized border. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) stated in their 2021 Global Report on Internal Displacement that the pandemic increased the needs and vulnerabilities of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and measures to curb the spread of coronavirus have greatly hindered humanitarian efforts. In consideration of this and the fact that globally the pandemic has dealt a hard blow on the global economy that it is important that an examination on how citizens who have decided not to totally depend on humanitarian aids and build businesses in order to earn a living have been able to survive. This research will also be examining and theorize the idea of a growing economy within the IDP camps.

I hold a Master's in Social Science Research, specializing in Public Policy Analysis from Tampere University. My Master's thesis focused on how insights from behavioral economics, namely prospect theory, can guide preventive policy formation in public health, by laying a framework for how policy officials can reduce perceived barriers to the consumption of preventive care, policy thereby reaching vulnerable and high risk groups. Beginning January 2024, I am a doctoral researcher in the Doctoral programme on Inequalities, Interventions and New Welfare State (DPInvest) at the University of Turku. My dissertation will create the first reference budgets for university/university of applied sciences students in Finland, laying out the resources that Finnish and non-EU students in Finland need to participate in current Finnish society.

The Image and Practices of Evolving State-Society Relations: Uzbekistan´s Street-Level Bureaucrats in Administrative Transformations

UN WOMEN Project (Preventing Forced Migration and Trafficking of Women and Girls in Nigeria: Build Resilience, Promote Sustainable Development), Development of a NAPTIP Gender Policy and Capacity building on the Implementation of the Policy. February– August 2021. UNHCR Global Compact on Refugees (National Focal Person), February 2019– December 2020. Kolo, L. Ladidi (2009) “Building more effective work teams at Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons”. A thesis written in fulfillment of an MSc in Human Resources Development (International Development). University of Manchester, United Kingdom. Published by University of Manchester Press Kolo, L. Ladidi (2019) “Statelessness. Nigeria’s realities and implications”. A paper presented at the Regional Strategic Meeting on Statelessness in Abidjan, 9th May 2019. Kolo, L. Ladidi (2019) “Mitigating Protection Concerns in Mixed Movements”. A paper presented at the UNHCR Regional Protection Dialogue 2 held in Abuja, 29th January 2019. https://reliefweb.int>report>niger Kolo, L. Ladidi (2020) “Implementing a Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework in Nigeria”. A paper presented at the Country Meeting for the Implementation of the Global Compact on Refugees, 9th December 2020.

Access to water and sanitation services remains low for most sub-Saharan African countries, and the progress towards achievement of this access for all by 2030, as per the SDG targets is stunted. The state of low access to water and sanitation has dire socioeconomic repercussions that scientific research can contribute to untangling. My research aims at providing recommendations for enhanced citizen participation in water and sanitation services as a remedy to accelerate water and sanitation services development, the case of Kenya.

Projects

The Politics of Corporate Resource Exploitation: Social Movement Influence on Paper- and Metal Industry Investments in Brazil and India