Alaattinoğlu has conducted research on various themes regarding bodily autonomy, explicit consent and data protection in period-tracking apps, and the Nordic Sámi Truth and Reconciliation Commissions.
Assistant Professor (tenure track) and Docent of Socio-legal Studies Daniela Alaattinoğlu is awarded this year’s Nils Klim Prize, worth worth NOK 500 000 (approx. EUR 43 000).
Alaattinoğlu is the first Finnish legal scholar and the first scholar from the University of Turku to receive the award.
The prize is awarded annually to a young scholar who has excelled in the field of humanities, law, social sciences, or theology. The recipient must be from, or working in, a Nordic country.
The prize, together with the Holberg prize, will be conferred during a ceremony at the University of Bergen on 5 June. Both prizes are funded by the Norwegian Government, and administered by the University of Bergen.
In his statement, the Nils Klim Committee Chair, Professor Ástráður Eysteinsson, said that Alaattinoğlu is a most worthy recipient of the 2025 Nils Klim Prize.
“While Daniela Alaattinoğlu is already a prominent scholar in her field, her academic contributions also contain important future challenges for a good number of relevant legal, social, and political spheres on the international scene.”
Alaattinoğlu completed her PhD degree in Law at the European University Institute in Florence in 2019.
Alaattinoğlu receives the award for her research into how laws and societies evolve together, how groups mobilise for change, and how law intersectionally includes and excludes individuals and groups.
Her key publications include the monograph Grievance Formation, Rights and Remedies: Involuntary Sterilisation and Castration in the Nordics, 1930s–2020s (2023) and the co-edited volume Contesting Femicide: Feminism and the Power of Law Revisited (2019, with Dr Adrian Howe). Alaattinoğlu has also authored a number of high-quality journal articles and book chapters, and she is a co-editor of Retfærd: Nordic Journal of Law and Justice.
“In my research I have investigated diverse topics such as involuntary sterilisation and castration, changing definitions of rape and consent, trans legal parenthood, non-consensual and non-therapeutic intersex interventions, data protection and period-tracking applications, as well as the Nordic Sámi Truth and Reconciliation Commissions,” Alaattinoğlu says.
“One of my most significant findings stems from my socio-legal work on grievance formation, demonstrating that rights are not merely legal instruments but also socio-cultural tools that individuals and groups can use to reshape their position,” Alaattinoğlu says.
