Honorary doctors 2024
Journalist Samir Abu Eid and Professor Michel Agier have been awarded honorary doctorates by the Faculty of Social Sciences at Lund University.
Samir Abu Eid is a journalist and foreign correspondent. He has been associated with Swedish Television and TV4 since the early 2000s and has appeared in the programmes Korrespondenterna and the 2016 US election. He currently works as SVT's Middle East correspondent and is often seen on the news programmes Aktuellt and Rapport.
As a journalist, Samir Abu Eid has covered several wars and conflicts, including reports from Libya, Syria, Iraq/Kurdistan, Gaza, Yemen, Mali, Afghanistan and Ukraine. He has also reported from inside North Korea, on Rohingya refugees from Myanmar and on climate change in India.
Abu Eid was awarded an honorary doctorate because he has contributed to raising the level of knowledge about peace and conflict issues in Swedish society and contributed with objective news reporting. His journalistic work is characterised by a balanced, analytical and empathetic approach, according to the social scientists' motivation.
The Faculty of Social Sciences writes:
"In a society where political polarisation is increasing and where a lot of disinformation and biased news circulates, Samir Abu Eid helps SVT's audience to understand conflict dynamics and peace processes and major events in world politics."
Michel Agier is Professor of Anthropology at the l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. His research focuses on the relationship between human globalisation, the conditions and places of exile, and the formation of new urban environments. He is best known internationally for his research on refugee camps and humanitarianism, but he has also worked on urbanisation in poor neighbourhoods in Brazil, known as favelas.
Agier's books published in English include “Managing the Undesirables” (2011), “Borderlands” (2016) and “The Stranger as My Guest” (2021). Apart from being an innovative scholar working on pressing themes, Michel Agier has been actively engaged in public and academic debates.
In the nomination, Simon Turner, Professor of Social Anthropology, writes:
“The distance between Anglophone academia (to which Scandinavia belongs) and Francophone academia is often too far. We could learn so much from the fantastic research that is taking part in France and elsewhere in the Francophone world. Michel Agier would be a first step in this direction in bridging this gap”.