By Peggy McInerny, Director of Communications

Two Swedish visiting professors enjoyed teaching courses of their own design at UCLA this fall.

UCLA International Institute, December 19, 2024 — For more than 10 years, UCLA has partnered with the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT*) in a Teaching Fellows program which funds Swedish scholars to teach at UCLA. Spearheaded by the International Institute in collaboration with the Division of Undergraduate Education, over the past several years our campus has welcomed visiting faculty from various Swedish universities who have taught courses in the UCLA Scandinavian section, global studies, psychology, psychiatry, public affairs, history, law, nursing and the medical school.

 Two STINT Teaching Fellows, mid-career professors Merima Bruncevic of the University of Gothenburg and Ylva Svensson of University West, taught courses at UCLA in fall 2024.

The entertainment industry and artificial intelligence

“I’ve had so much fun, I loved doing this course [at UCLA],” said Bruncevic, associate professor of law at the University of Gothenburg, of her AI and Entertainment Law course at the UCLA School of Law.

The course was Bruncevic’s first time teaching a specialized, entertainment-focused AI course. “I was preparing for about 20–25 students, but I ended up having 80! It was mainly popular not because of me, but because it was the first course about AI at the law school.

“I was very impressed with the UCLA students, not just in the way they tackle a problem, but in how they communicate,” she added. “Law students here are really trained in the Socratic method… If they are prepared, they’re impressive in on-the-spot discussions and being able to frame and answer questions at a high level. So the Socratic method is something that, for law education, I am taking with me.

“I really liked that I was able to give a specialized course. From my experience in Sweden, the UK and Italy, [law] courses are generally much broader. If you’re doing a specialized course, it’s always for doctoral or graduate students.

Of note, she said, “I’ve never experienced teaching such a diverse group of students. The course was an elective that they could choose within their own programs, and they were all on different levels and from different backgrounds.** Some were really proficient in law, some were not lawyers and some came from the entertainment industry. I really enjoyed that.

“I also had students from all over the world — Chinese, Japanese and Korean students, people from EU and elsewhere — and then a huge diversity of students from the U.S. It was lovely.”

In addition to teaching, the Swedish law professor was in residence at the Institute for Technology, Law & Policy at the UCLA School of Law, where she attended many research-based seminars and discussions. “UCLA Law Vice Dean Mark McKenna [co-faculty director of the institute] was really instrumental in that,” she said.

“I have really broad international experience, but not in the U.S. So this was the first time I had an experience of the U.S. university system,” continued Bruncevic, who earned an L.L.M. in entertainment law from the University of Westminster in the UK, after which she worked in intellectual property law for Disney Corporation in London for three years.

She went on to complete a Ph.D. in art, law and legal philosophy at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, during which she focused on the cultural commons, then did postdoctoral research on cultural heritage law (with a focus on transnational cultural heritage) as a fellow at the Univeristà Degli Studi in Rome.

“During my postdoc, a lot of people started using emerging technologies to scan and make virtual realities based on cultural heritage. I saw that there was an entertainment layer being put on ancient or traditional culture.

“We started referring to that as ‘technoheritage,’ which is regulated in two different legal fields: international public law, which governs cultural heritage, and intellectual property law, which governs all digital and new gamification-types of [cultural heritage creations]. That brought me back to entertainment law from sort of left field.

Reflecting on her career to date, Bruncevic said, “I’ve had periods in my career where I’ve purely done research, not even teaching. Then there have been times where I’ve only practiced. People come to you, particularly in this field. A lot of filmmakers, musicians, artists and cultural institutions have reached out to me when they needed help.”

Diversity and identity formation

“The biggest difference about teaching at UCLA was the freedom to develop your own course,” said Ylva Svensson, associate professor of developmental psychology at University West in Trollhättan, Sweden. Svensson co-taught an upper-division psychology seminar (Diverse Contexts, Relationships and Social Identity Development) with UCLA Professor Jaana Juvonen in fall quarter 2024.

“In Sweden, if I want to teach a course during fall semester, then I have to have all the paperwork — the curriculum, the reading list, everything that has to be decided — ready almost a year before.”

“I also find it so much easier to be relevant here because we can pick up on things going on at the moment. Or if students want to know more about something we’re talking about, we can add that.”

The Swedish professor teaches in both the psychology program and the teachers’ education program at her home university. Her teaching and research focus on identity development and its relation to ethnic identity and social inclusion.

Although the psychology students she teaches at University West are not as diverse as the UCLA student body, Svensson says those who take her developmental psychology courses in the teachers’ education program are quite diverse.

Unlike Bruncevic, Svensson has been at UCLA twice previously: once to do a research project while a graduate student, and once as a postdoctoral fellow. Her course this fall was her first time teaching here.

“The biggest difference for me is that at UCLA, we can talk about race and ethnicity — for good and bad, I would say — whereas in Sweden, it’s quite difficult to address it. We don’t really have a common language to talk about these issues [there] and it’s highly sensitive for a lot of people.

“I say for good and bad because it’s easier to talk about these things here, but sometimes I get the feeling that we’re not really talking about it. When I start to question, ‘What does diversity actually mean?’, students find it difficult to articulate.”

Ylva Svensson teaching a UCLA psychology course, fall 2024. (Photo provided by Svensson.)

Svensson and Juvonen specifically designed the course to question students’ assumptions and demonstrate that diversity means different things in different contexts. “We’ve been using research articles both from European and American contexts… and talking about the assumptions on which we’re basing our discussions,” she said.

“There were only 24 students in the class, so we had a lot of in-class activities. We tried to base not only the content of the course, but also the way we taught the course, on the theories that we were presenting,” she explained. Students in the course had a range of ethnic backgrounds and undergraduate majors.

“They seemed to appreciate it,” said Svensson of their feedback. “Many said that it was one of the few classes where they’d actually felt seen and heard at the individual level. A number said that the course has been part of their own identity formation. So it’s been a really, really good experience.”

Svensson’s research, she explained, explores “how, at the individual level, you develop a sense of ethnic or racial identity in a context where that is not spoken about. Because we don’t talk about these topics in Sweden, that will have an effect on the individual.

“I’m interested in knowing if it matters whether you go to a school that is diverse in terms of ethnic and racial background. Does it make it easier to talk about these things, but also to develop your own identity, if you’re surrounded by diverse people?”

Her most recent research project followed a municipal desegregation project in Sweden in which two schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods were closed, and the children bused to five schools that previously served only ethnic Swedes.

“I go to schools where basically everyone has an immigrant background,” she said,” I meet students in these neighborhoods that have never met someone from Sweden beyond their teachers. It’s the same thing for Swedish kids, most of them have never been to immigrant neighborhoods and many of them don’t have any immigrant friends.”

Many of her university students, notes Svensson, will become psychologists and teachers in Sweden. “Their clients or students will be diverse,” she observes, “so I think how we talk about these issues is extremely important for the next generation.”


*STINT teaching sabbatical fellowships are specifically intended to give Swedish researchers and university lecturers international teaching experience with the goal of leveraging that experience to enrich the quality of education at their home institutions. The competitive fellowships are awarded to lecturers and researchers who are nominated by their home institutions, and include a generous scholarship and travel expenses, including for an introductory visit to meet colleagues prior to their short-term residency at a university in the U.S., Asia or Africa.

** UCLA offers four graduate legal degrees. The J.D. is a three-year graduate program that is typically required to become a lawyer in the U.S. The LL.M. is a shorter program intended for students who have already either earned a law degree or qualified to practice law. In the U.S., lawyers from other countries often pursue an LL.M. in U.S. law in order to take a bar exam and qualify to practice here. The S.J.D. (doctor of juridical science degree) program requires applicants to have already completed a J.D. (or international equivalent) and an LL.M. The M.L.S., or master of legal studies, is a graduate degree designed for non-legal professionals for whom a deeper knowledge of the law would be beneficial.

This article was first published on December 19, 2024, and updated on December 20.

Published: Thursday, December 19, 2024