Joel Samuelsson is a private law scholar specializing in contracts and legal hermeneutics. He earned his LL.D. (jur. dr) from Uppsala University in 2008. The principal theme of Samuelsson’s research has been the lasting effects of early 20th-century legal realism on private law discourse and legal methodology. Two years as a Research Associate at the Uppsala Law Faculty resulted in Tolkningslärans gåta: En studie i avtalsrätt (Iustus, 2011), a reimagining of the doctrine of interpretation in the sphere of contracts using historical contrast and Wittgensteinian therapeutics. Early on, Samuelsson was invested in the development of European private law, and he has contributed to several studies under the auspices of the Common Core project (Turin). He has written extensively on contract law, the law of specific contracts, legal methodology and the didactics of law. In Svensk avtalsrätt: Fullmaktsläran (Iustus, 2023), Samuelsson attempted to reconstitute the Swedish law of agency in the wake of recent case law. He is currently working on a cross-disciplinary (law and literature) four-year project on the repression of climate activism that is expressive of latter-day authoritarian populist tendencies.

He became docent in 2010 and was appointed professor in 2016, both at Uppsala University. He served as Vice Dean of the Uppsala Law Faculty from 2022 through 2026.

As a Sabbatical Fellow at SCAS, Samuelsson will continue his work on climate activism and begin writing a monograph setting out the details of a post-realist doctrine of contract interpretation.

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