My research considers how knowledge production shapes gender equality policy, and the possibilities and limitations of institutionalizing progressive ideals around gender equality and diversity and inclusion in both a Nordic and transnational context. My work specifically engages with how the usage of progressive ideals in Swedish state feminist policy approaches are shaped by economic, social, and political rationales, along with the possibilities and limitations of those framings.

Research Statement (PDF)

Selected Publications

Bullock, Lukas, (2024). “Exporting Sexköpslagen: Sweden, Sex Work, and the Moral Stakes of Externalizing Feminist Policy.” Sexuality Research & Social Policy 21, no. 2 (2): 503–13. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-023-00855-7

Description: This article traces how Swedish forms of feminist statecraft make usage of a first-of-its-kind sex work regulation in order to advance its international image as an exceptional feminist state, which I argue is legitimized through the active silencing and marginalization of Swedish sex worker critiques of the law. As I demonstrate, the epistemic silencing of sex workers helps Sweden further its moral image as a 'good state' in international affairs while sex workers are pushed further to the margins. 

Bullock, Lukas, (2025). “Confrontations in Kentucky; Housing Justice and the New Political Vision Emerging in the Bluegrass State” in Dispatches from the Threshold Fernwood Publishing. Halifax. 

Description: This book chapter reflects on housing justice activism that occurred across central and eastern Kentucky during the Covid-19 pandemic. In particular, it guides readers through the ways that activists are re-politicizing discourses on tenants rights in transformative ways in a deeply conservative state. 

Bullock, Lukas, (2025). “Entrepreneurship, Empowerment, and Development: Unraveling Economic Rationales in Sweden’s Feminist Foreign Policy.” Foreign Policy Analysis 21, no. 2. https://doi.org/10.1093/fpa/oraf010

Description: This article examines how economic policy was operationalized within Sweden's Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP), active between 2014-2022. As I argue, the neoliberal economic logics embedded in the policy programming of FFP were shaped by 'market feminism' (Kantola and Squires 2012), which primarily constructed the economic liberation of women and girls in the Global South as necessary to advance the global economy. In practice, this was done primarily through public-private partnerships with Swedish corporations. I contend that this reliance on the power of the free market as a defining element of policy efforts ultimately inhibited the transformative potential of FFP's economic policy, demonstrating how gender equality, neoliberalism, and foreign policy are increasingly shaping one another. 

Bullock, Lukas, (2025). “Deconstructing Exceptionalism: Surveying Afro-Swedish Feminist Perspectives on Swedish State feminism.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State, and Society, https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxaf032

Description: This article relays how Afro-Swedish feminist activists and politicians critically perceive Swedish gender equality as a political project. A focal point of the article interrogates how Swedish society and politics are shaped by anxieties around acknowledging race as a structure of domination, limiting the space that exists for Afro-Swedish stakeholders to influence the direction of gender equality policy, which is strongly guided by a gender-first mentality. As I argue, these critiques expose the limits of Sweden’s exceptionalist feminist reputation.