In 2000, the University received a donation from the Torsten and Ragnar Söderberg Foundation for a professorship (the Pufendorf Endowed Chair) in memory of Samuel Pufendorf. The professorship is held for a maximum period of four years and entails that the professor gets more time for their own research and that their travel expenses are covered. A board proposes candidates, and the Vice-Chancellor makes the decision.
Sixteen applications were submitted, and the board made a selection based on different criteria. The board consists of the chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute, the deans of the Faculty of Social Sciences, School of Economics and Management, Faculty of Law and the Joint Faculties of Humanities and Theology, and the heads of the Fahlbeck Foundation, the New Society of Letters at Lund and the Royal Society of Letters at Lund.
Titti Mattsson’s research
Titti’s research has a departure point in Pufendorf’s theories that laws and state power should be used to protect citizens and ensure justice. She uses Martha Fineman’s vulnerability theory, which advocates that society should recognise and address the vulnerability of the individual. This enables the examination of how a strong and legally secure state could act as a protective and supportive power.
Her research includes examining the roles and duties that arise in a society and how society can achieve moral equality. She also looks at the role of the general public regarding responsibility for individual citizens. Another aspect she studies is how a state or legislative responsibility can be adapted to people’s vulnerability and human realities in the 21st century.
How does it feel to hold the professorship?
I am really pleased! I am both proud and grateful for this opportunity to devote four years to jurisprudence research and research collaboration in Sweden and internationally concerning issues I am passionate about.
What does it mean to you?
It means I have the scope to immerse myself in basic research in jurisprudence, something for which external funding is rarely available.
What do you hope to achieve during this period?
I hope to develop the jurisprudential understanding of people’s dependence on society in a time of new conditions of life, and where people’s needs for healthcare and welfare are two themes that I like to use as examples.