Elin Jönsson

Research Areas

• Crimes of the powerful
• Regulation of corporate harm
• Social conflict, protest and resistance

Current Research

My research focuses primarily on two, somewhat overlapping, areas in criminology and sociology of law: powerful actors (such as nation-states and corporations) and the regulation of their crimes or harms; and patterns of social conflict, contradiction, and resistance. 

In 2025, I began working as a postdoctoral researcher in the project Protest as a Democracy Test (ProTest), which investigates the relationship between protest culture and democracy in a comparative perspective. For more information about the project, visit the ProTest website.

In 2024, I defended my doctoral thesis Hardened Responsibility? Contestations and Contradictions in the Regulation of Corporations. Taking the dynamics of global capitalism, and corporate harm in this context, as its point of departure, the thesis explores the trend of governments introducing mandatory disclosure and due diligence requirements on companies. Interpreting this as a hardening of corporate social responsibility (CSR), the thesis explores such hardening as an outcome of contestation and struggle.