Notes on Contributors
Caroline Adolphsen
is an associate professor, PhD at Aarhus University and chair of the âHope For Childrenâ crc Policy Centre. Her research area is childrenâs rights in social welfare cases and medical law and her primary focus is situations where there is a conflict between the parental consent and the childâs need for treatment or support. She combines her research and university teaching with teaching practitioners such as social workers and medical professionals and has written several reports together with the Danish Institute for Human Rights om legal issues where societal interventions into the right to family life and privacy of vulnerable individuals can be necessary.
Lena R.L. Bendiksen
Dean and Professor of Law, University of Tromsø â the Arctic University of Norway. She received her doctorate in law in 2007. Dr. Bendiksen is an experienced teacher as she has taught law subjects for twenty years. She has participated in several quality development in higher education projects, and she has received several teaching awards. Her main research topics are within child law and human rights. She has published books and articles, and she has participated in several committees appointed by the Norwegian Ministry of Children and Equality. She is currently participating in a committee appointed to propose a new and modern Children Act by the end of 2020.
Hrefna Friðriksdóttir
is a professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Iceland. Her main research fields are family law, childrenâs rights and child protection and succession law. Hrefna is the chairman of the Ãrmann Snævarr Research Institute on Family Affairs, chairman of the Icelandic Adoption Board and chairman of the Committee of research and evaluation of state/institutional care for children. She is a board member of Nordisk Forening mot barnemishandling og omsorgssvikt, member of the International Society of Family Law (isfl), member of the European Commission on Sexual Orientation Law and member of the Nordic Network on Barnahus Models. Hrefna has numerous national and international publications.
Elisabet Gisladóttir
received a Magister Juris degree from the University of Iceland in 2009 and a LL.M from ucla School of Law in 2012, with an emphasis on Human Rights and Social Justice. She is a Senior Legal Advisor in the area of Human Rights at the Ministry of Justice and a part time lecturer in Family Law and Childrenâs Rights at the University of Iceland. Previously, she worked for the Ombudsman for Children, where she wrote numerous reports and articles on Childrenâs Rights. She has participated in several national and international committees and is currently the chairperson of the National Steering Committee on Human Right and a member of the National Steering Committee on Children.
Suvianna Hakalehto
is Professor of Law at the University of Eastern Finland, where she has taught child law, education law and tort law since 2014. She has previously worked as a lawyer for Mannerheim League for Child Welfare and as a lecturer and researcher at the University of Helsinki. Suvianna has published on several topics concerning childrenâs legal position one of the main themes being childrenâs rights at school. Suvianna is a chair of Child Law Lawyers, an association for promoting expertise on childrenâs rights among lawyers in Finland. She is currently a member of the Child Advisory Board of the Childrenâs Ombudsman.
Hanne Hartoft
holds a PhD and work as assistant professor at the Department of Law at Aalborg University. Her research interests lie in childrenâs and adolescentsâ legal position in modern welfare states. This gives a perspective across traditional legal disciplines. Her research is in social welfare law based on national rules and international instruments such as The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. She often takes a starting point at the rights of children, and deals with the responsibility of the public authorities. Since January 2019 Hanne has been a member of The National Council for Children.
Trude Haugli
Dr. Juris, Professor of Law, University of Tromsø â the Arctic University of Norway, where she has been Dean for all together 10 years. Dr. Haugli is an experienced teacher as she has taught different law subjects since 1984. Her main research topics are within child law. She has published extensively within different areas of child law, several books, book-chapters and articles. She was for two years acting judge at HÃ¥logaland High Court. She has been the Head of the Norwegian Equality and Anti-discrimination Board and participated in several committees appointed by the Norwegian Ministry of Children and Equality.
Sanna Koulu
She (LL.D., trained on the bench) is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Lapland, Finland, combining research on child law with empirical methods and legal theory. Her research interests relate broadly to the role of law in governing families, to human rights and to the contractualization of family law. Koulu is currently working in the project caps, which examines childrenâs knowing agency in cases of parental stalking. She is also a member of the Ethics Committee of Youth and Childhood Studies in Finland since 2018.
Pernilla Leviner
She (Ph.D 2011) is Associate Professor in Public Law at the Faculty of Law, Stockholm University. She is the Director of the Stockholm Centre for the Rights of the Child, Stockholm University, a research centre dealing with child law with a strong focus on interdisciplinary perspectives. Levinerâs research interests lie across the fields of public and family law â more specifically child law and social welfare law. Her publications deal with different aspects of the relation between the state, the family and the individual, often focusing on childrenâs rights and the responsibility of public authorities when it comes to child protection.
Titti Mattsson
B.A. 1988 (Washington D.C.), LL.M. 1991, J.D. 2002 (Lund) is Professor of Public Law at the Faculty of Law, Lund University. Her child law research lies primarily in the intersection between jurisprudence, ethics and social work, with focuses on social welfare policy and healthcare services for children. She is part of national as well as international research collaborations concerning child law, and has published in monographs and anthologies, as well as in international and national journals. She runs the Health Law Research Centre at Lund University, and together with Ass. Prof. Ulrika Andersson, she operates the interdisciplinary research environment Law and Vulnerability at the same university.
Anna Nylund
Professor of Law, University of Tromsø â the Arctic University of Norway. She received her doctorate in law at University of Helsinki in 2006. Dr. Nylund has taught civil and criminal procedure, insolvency law, alternative dispute resolution, and legal methods. Her main research topics are comparative and European aspects of civil procedure law, alternative dispute resolution, and child law. She has co-directed several research projects including The future of Nordic civil litigation in 2012â2014, The European Union and national civil procedure in 2015â2016 and Scandinavian mediation research 2016â2017. She presents regularly at international conferences and is a member of several national and international scholarly associations. She was the co-editor of several books.
Kirsten Sandberg
Dr.juris, Professor of Law, University of Oslo. She was a member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child from 2011 to 2019, serving as the Committeeâs chairperson 2013â2015. Her research focus is on child law and childrenâs rights, including the right to participation, child protection, education law, asylum-seeking children and environmental issues. She has served as acting Justice in the Supreme Court of Norway, worked in the Legal Department of the Norwegian Ministry of Justice and been a member of various committees and boards in the public sphere, including under the Norwegian Research Council.
Randi Sigurdsen
Professor of Law, University of Tromsø â the Arctic University of Norway. She has taught child law, health law, welfare law and public law for several years. Her main research topics are in the intersection between human rights, public law and child law. She as published articles, book chapters and a book on compulsory treatment of children in health care and social services. Currently she is a member of a law committee appointed by the Norwegian Ministry of Health and Care Services to propose a new common legislation on compulsory treatment within health and social law, which includes children.
Johanna Schiratzki
is a professor of welfare law at Ersta Sköndal Bräcke University College and a docent in private (family) law. She has previously been a professor of child law at Linköping University and professor of legal science at Stockholm University. Her research is largely framed around the principle of the best interests of the child and covers numerous issues of child, family and welfare law. Schiratzki is frequently involved in interdisciplinary research. She assists the Swedish Government and authorities on child law issue.
Hannele Tolonen
University Lecturer, University of Helsinki, Vaasa Unit of Legal Studies. Doctor of Laws, trained on the bench. Her research interests are primarily in the fields of procedural law and family law, especially child law and procedural participation. In her doctoral dissertation (2015), she studied childrenâs standing and participatory rights in Finnish court proceedings on parental responsibility and taking children into care, evaluating childrenâs role in light of the international standards, especially the case law of ECtHR and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The theme of her current research is representation of children and adults in criminal and civil proceedings. Before doctoral studies, she worked as legal aid counsel.