During her career, Elisabeth Elgán’s main research interest has been how gender interacts with politics and state policies. Having studied Swedish and French policies on abortion and contraceptives in the first half of the 20th century, she has written about gender in party politics, gender in municipal politics, gender equality in France and Sweden and feminist activism. On this latter issue, she has published Att ge sig själv makt: Grupp 8 och 1970-talets feminism, 2015; “The Myth and the Archives: Some Reflections on Swedish Feminism in the 1970s” in Women’s Liberation Movement, 2017; and “The Importance of Going to the Right Meeting: 1970s Swedish Feminists’ International Practice” in Transnational Feminism in Non-English Speaking Europe, 2024.

After the US Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to eliminate the constitutional right to abortion, Elgán’s research has concentrated on explaining the successes of social movements. She interprets the Supreme Court’s decision as a result of decades of campaigning by anti-abortion movements. To answer her research question, she is researching a conservative Swedish movement that, in the years before the First World War, succeeded in bringing down the left-wing government. This is the topic that she hopes to advance during her stay at SCAS.

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2026-27.