Jacob Öberg

About Jacob Öberg

Background and experiences

I have a PhD in European Law from the European University Institute in Florence (2014) and have since then been active as a senior lecturer in criminal law at Örebro University and as a postdoctoral fellow in law at Lund University. From 1 of February 2023 I am a Full Professor of European Union Law (fully tenured) at the University of Southern Denmark. My key responsibility as a fully tenured Professor of EU Law at the Law Department at SDU is to reinforce, enhance and develop the existing teaching and research environment in EU Law. . In addition, in December 2016, I was conferred with the title associate professor of law (Docent) at Örebro University. I have a law degree from Stockholm University (2007) and several years of experience as an associate at the law firm Delphi in Stockholm.

Research credentials

My research touches on a large number of topics such as constitutional EU law, EU criminal law and general issues of criminal sanctions and criminalization. I am a prominent authority in these fields and have published 20 peer-reviewed articles in internationally leading journals such as European Law Review, European Constitutional Law Review, Yearbook of European Law, Journal of Corporate Law Studies and Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law. In addition to a monograph with Hart Publishing, I have published a co-edited anthology at Brill, a scientific report at SIEPS and five book chapters in anthologies published at Cambridge University Press, Brill and Thomson Reuters. In addition, I have had assignments as a guest editor at various journals and have repeatedly been hired as a peer reviewer for leading journals and publishers such as the Journal of Common Market Studies, European Law Journal, European Journal of Risk Regulation, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, Journal of European Integration,Journal of The Law and Practice of International Courts and Tribunals and Oxford University Press.

I have been regularly invited to present my research at international conferences (UACES, Virtue, European Society of Criminology) and to give guest lectures at other universities. I was recently the sole guest editor of a special thematic issue ‘EU Agencies in Transnational Criminal Enforcement: From a Coordinated Approach to an Integrated EU Criminal Justice’ published in the Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law. I am a member of the steering group for the Swedish Network for European Law Research (SNEF) as a representative of Örebro University and one of the editors of the European Law Journal, which is the internationally leading journal for contextual EU law research. My work has been cited by the European Parliament and I have been involved as an expert on EU legislation in major consulting projects with the European Commission and other consulting companies on the implementation of EU legislation in Sweden. I have been called upon to make expert statements to the European Parliament's LIBE and FEMM committees on whether gender - based violence should be criminalised at EU level. This led to further interviews with SVT, Swedish Radio P4, Göteborgsposten, ETC and Landets Fria Tidning

Research profile

In the field of EU law research, I have currently three main lines of research; (1) multidisciplinary and contextual perspectives on EU law, (2) the federal dimension of EU law, and (3) the Union's criminal policy and its development under the Lisbon Treaty. My recent research is particularly interested in the development of EU law in its political, cultural and economic context, as well as the role of law as a factor in European integration. In a recently published article 'Exit, Voice and Consensus - A Legal and Political Analysis of the Emergency Brake in EU Criminal Policy' in European Law Review (2021), I analyze decision-making in the field of Union criminal law and the interplay between law and policy in order to better evaluate the nature of EU integration in the field of criminal justice. My research in constitutional EU law has opened up a new field of research, 'contextual legal integration theory', whereby the methodological starting point is to link rigorous legal analysis with sociological, philosophical, political science and legal economic theory formation. Based on this research, I am currently carrying out the project 'Normative foundations for integrated EU criminal law - powers, restrictions and justifications' with funding granted by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. Based on democratic theories of representation, theories of federalism and economic theories of market failures, I strive to develop the first integrated normative framework for evaluating the Union's criminal law measures. The final results will be published as a monograph with the title’ The Normative Foundations for EU Criminal Justice: Powers, Limits and Justifications’ in the Modern Studies in European Law series at Hart Publishing  (during winter 2023). 

My other central research interest is economic crime and the criminalisation of behaviors that are contrary to economic and financial regulation. In order to develop a convincing theory regarding the appropriateness of criminal sanctions, I have sought to combine results and concepts from different disciplines such as criminology, legal economics and regulatory studies. In a chapter I recently published in an anthology with Cambridge University Press, ‘Day Fines in Sweden’, I explore the economic and political foundations of the Swedish daily fine system. Based on my previous research, I plan a future limited research project with the preliminary title 'The appropriateness of criminal sanctions for the implementation of Union policies' which aims to develop a comprehensive theory of criminalization as an instrument to ensure compliance with EU legal standards. In order to obtain more general conclusions, I will examine two areas of law, illegal immigration / irregular migration and food regulation, which offer interesting case studies for the project.

Funding and research collaborations

I have been very successful in obtaining external funding for my research. Recently, I received generous funding of SEK 1 979 000 from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond to carry out a research  the project titled 'The Normative Foundations for Integrated EU Criminal Justice: Powers, Limits and Justifications' at the University of Amsterdam for 12 months:https://www.rj.se/en/grants/2021/the-normative-foundations-for-integrated-eu-criminal-justice-powers-limits-and-justifications. In addition, I have obtained funding as a co-applicant in the multidisciplinary project 'Conceptualising Cross-Border Regions in the European Union's Legal Order: From Covidfencing to Constitutionalisation' led by Marja-Liisa Öberg at Lund University. The project was granted SEK 4 388 000 in funding from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond: https://www.rj.se/en/grants/2021/conceptualising-cross-border-regions-in-the-european-unions-legal-order-from-covidfencing-to-constitutionalisation-/

Furthermore I will, commencing in December 2023, carry out- as a principal investigator- a three-year project (commencing December 2023) together with Christian Kaunert and Sarah Leonard which analyses to what extent the European Union's Area of Freedom, Security and Justice has transformed from a cooperative regime to a supranational integrated framework. The project was successfully funded by the Swedish Research Council ( 5 000 000 SEK).

In addition to these major projects I have been successful in attracting funding to conduct my research and have obtained a total of SEK 1 585 581 in funding from public as well as private research funders. I also have an extensive international network and broad experience of participating and initiating national and international research collaborations. In June 2017, I co-organised an international conference at Leiden University on the Union's future criminal justice policy, where the conference presentations were published as an anthology by Brill. In October 2019, I also organised a multidisciplinary international symposium on EU criminal justice agencies where the best contributions were published in 2021 in a special thematic issue of the Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law. In a current research project with Valsamis Mitsilegas, I am organizing a symposium on ‘The Normative Foundations for European Criminal Law’ with leading voices in European criminal law whose contribution will be published as a special thematic issue in the European Law Journal. In addition, I have made a significant contribution to maintaining an active research environment in EU law at both Örebro and Lund University through regular presentations of my own research and participation and planning of seminar activities.

Teaching

I have completed both university pedagogical courses I and II and the research supervisor training course. In addition to having been a regular guest lecturer at Uppsala University, Umeå University and Stockholm University since 2011, I have since August 2014 been employed at Örebro University as a senior lecturer in criminal law to teach full-time in criminal law, EU law and procedural law. I have also had the course director responsibilities for the basic courses in these subjects. I have extensive experience from supervising student essays, of which I have supervised a total of 59 bachelor’s degree projects and 28 master's theses. I am currently assistant supervisor for Elin Lindfors who is a newly admitted doctoral student at Örebro University. My interactive and student-focused teaching has been very much appreciated among the students, which has been evinced in very good course evaluations. In addition, I have previously held a leading position in the pedagogical development at the Law Department in Örebro through my assignment as deputy chair of the Pedagogical Committee (Utbildningskollegiet); which is the body responsible for ensuring that the quality of teaching is maintained. I am currently the course coordinator and sole examiner for European procedural law and general Criminal Law and Critical Perspectives (advanced level) and the basic course in criminal law (bachelor) and course director of  the general course 'Rule of Law' and T4 (semester 4 on the Law Programme).

I have acted as Deputy Head of the Department at School of Behavioural, Social and Legal Sciences (BSR) with special responsibility for educational issues. As Deputy Head of Department, I had the overall responsibility for all pedagogical and strategic development projects, responsibility for the strategic focus of education in all programs in psychology, social work, law and criminology and responsibility for the implementation of educational evaluations and the implementation of general strategic guidelines from the Faculty Board of Humanities and Social Sciences.