Our research
Södertörn University has professional, creative research environments that range over many disciplines and fields.
Our research has a contemporary focus united with an active and critical approach to the past. Many of the research groups and research projects strive to achieve a high level of contemporary and social relevance. The university's research generally has an international focus, even in subjects that traditionally examine their own national cultures and history. A key word is multidisciplinarity.
Current research projects from Södertörn University's research project database are published here on an ongoing basis.
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The point of departure of the project is gender constructions in radical social movements in Sweden during the 1960s and 70s. The aim is to analyse how masculinity and political ideology and practice were interrelated in the revolutionary left in Sweden. I will analyze the constructions of collective identities and discourses of masculinity and politics. How did masculinity work and what became unmanly in the development of poliltics within these movements? If norms about masculinity prescript a certain way of doing masculinity as well as doing politics, it is not so easy to dissociate f... (Read more)
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This project is basically an analysis of the televised shows of the Egyptian televangelist Amr Khaled. His Ramadan-shows has been immensely popular among Arab speaking Muslims all over the world. His teaching differs from many earlier preachers/teachers in that his interpretation is often directed to the more affluent people. Many sympathizers seem to be young people and women in particular. In his shows, questions relevant for young people and women are often in focus. An interesting aspect is that Amr Khaled’s message is rather a-political, or was at least until the Arab... (Read more)
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Within Increasing number of sectors of Swedish society there is heard complaints and comments about the increasing administrative burden. As never before people I both private and public organizations are involved in planning, reporting, auditing, meeting and directing. At the same time all of this is made in the most praiseworthy purpose - to save money and streamline in order to get as much output as possible of the resources. But the development seems contrary pointing at the opposite direction. Productivity goes down. Within healthcare, the number of care hours decreases, the police... (Read more)
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Anaerobic ammonia oxidation (anammox): a proposed missing piece in the Baltic Sea nitrogen cycleMer info
The microbial community ecology of the Baltic Proper is studied within this project, funded by the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies, and several microbial ecosystem functions are investigated in order to understand the microbial capacities to cope with environmental change. With low surface salinity, a steep halocline, an eutrophication process and infrequent water mixing, areas of anoxic deep waters and sediments are gradually increasing, resulting in a steep oxygen gradient. The stratification of microbial community structure and functional capacity along the oxygen grad... (Read more)
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During recent years, scholarly attention has been given to civil society in Eastern Europe, and to a certain degree also to the social movements and political protests of the region. Little attention has however been directed towards the impact and role of radical leftist groups in these newly democratized post-communist political systems. In social movement research it has been noted that anarchist and autonomist groups have played a prominent role for the broader left and new social movements in Western countries since the late 1960s, often appearing as the broader movement&rsq... (Read more)
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My current research is sponsored by Brottsoffermyndigheten and focuses on how different countries work against human trafficking. The background for this is a UN report from 2009 that suggests that the problem is approached in very different ways. At the same time, there are few studies that can describe and explain these differences. For that purpose, a comparison is made between six countries of origin and destination with respect to different functions (detection, prevention, protection, crisis management, consequence management, response) and from the new institutionalism perspective.
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Archaeological traces. Past migrations, interaction and spatial patterns in the Baltic Sea area.Mer info
The project departs in the contradiction between the sedentary and place bound character of archaeological thought and data, and the often mobile and fluid reality of the past. Through a set of archaeologically well-known prehistoric places we try to elucidate spatial and cultural relations in the Baltic Sea area. By presenting a number of junctions and crossroads, the project aims to illuminate the problematic ideas of sedentism in order to complement and nuance the description of past contacts and connections between people and communities. The starting point is the diversity o... (Read more)
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Aristotle is the first to argue that the task of natural science is essentially to investigate into the various causal relations that govern the processes of nature. This project deals with different questions, epistemological as well as metaphysical, that are raised by Aristotle's theory of causality. What kind of object is a cause: is it a thing or an event? Are causes 'out there' in the world, as objective features of this world, or are they rather to be thought of as elements in our explanations of nature? By exploring Aristotle's ways of dealing with an... (Read more)
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Audiences in the Age of Media Convergence: Media Generations in Estonia and Sweden It is often argued that young people are among the first to adopt new media technologies, and that they are especially keen on taking on all new features connected with mobile technology and the Internet. In spite of this oft-repeated claim, one could suspect that since computers, mobile phones and other personal and digital media have become so widespread among large portions of the populations in the industrialised world, it might not be technology, per se, that distinguishes you... (Read more)
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Britta Stenholm and Stellan Arvidson: Creators of opinion – Swedish networks and concealed powers in the Cold War. A discourse-historical linguistic study .Mer info
The aim of this project is to investigate cultural processes, ideological currents of thoughts in the Swedish society through the broad production and argumentative activities of Britta Stenholm (1916-2002) and Stellan Arvidson (1902 – 1997) during several decades in the time of the Cold War, when questions of democratisation and education were of great interest. Arvidson was a social democratic member of the Swedish Parlament, a school politician, “Father of the Swedish Comprehensive School”, president of the Swedish society of authors, professor of literature... (Read more)
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Possible means to reduce air pollution from marine vessels in the Baltic Sea are analyzed in the research project BSR InnoShip. Today, we know that these emissions play significant roles in the eutrophication of the Baltic Sea that leads to severe disturbances in vital ecosystems. The latest estimates indicate that more than 50 percent of deposited nitrogen comes from marine transportation. The research group from Södertörn University primarily contributes with analyzes of communication barriers and how communication between key stakeholders could be improved.
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One way to understand communication patterns when the participants are in a state of panic, Mats Landqvist Research linked to the Baltic region and Eastern Europe Status Research area for doctoral studies | ||||||||
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Chemicals in textiles: Managing environmental and health risks from products with complex product chainsMer info
The objective of this interdisciplinary research project is to gain insights about the dilemmas, opportunities, and challenges that private and public organizations face regarding the development of responsible procurement, including how they manage environmental and health risk in different parts of a complex product chain. The case in question is the textile sector. Our analysis of responsible procurement in this sector includes a focus on (i) priorities and knowledge – or lack of knowledge – among public and private procuring organizations about chemical risks in d... (Read more)
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Steampunk is an aesthetic technological movement, incorporating science fiction, art, engineering, and a vibrant 21st century counterculture. It is characterized by a retro-futuristic envisioning of alternative pasts and futures in which the steam-powered technologies of the Victorian era came to develop quite differently. Steampunks are hardware hackers with a punk Do-It-Yourself ethos, reclaiming technology for the masses. Their costumes mix top hats and corsets with brass and elaborate clockwork constructions. The project aims to critically investigate the political and theore... (Read more)
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Conditions for Participatory Environmental Governance in a Regional Context: The Baltic and Adriatic Sea RegionsMer info
In a more globalized world, with multiple governance levels and sources of authority, participatory
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This project concerns Muslim environments in contemporary Sweden. The focus is on teaching and preaching in some local groups in urban spaces. Questions that the project focuses are what kind of Islam that is advocated and views on integration/segregation and gender-roles, for example, and how that relates to issues such as freedom of religion, democratic values, secularisation and so on. Pedagogical questions are also focused. It has for long been taken for granted that confessional education has been authoritative and this project will focus on how teaching is planned and what... (Read more)
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The aim the project is to study how gender is created, expressed and normalized in online environments among young people (age 10 to 14 years old) in Estonia and Sweden. Furthermore, we will study what meaning this creation of identity has in their everyday life. We will study the following three themes: a. How gender is expressed and normalized in online environments? b. What meanings has the online construction of gender, for the young in their everyday life? c. How do young people use media technology tools to complement verbal and written expressions i... (Read more)
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Contemporary (Post)modernity? Canonization Processes of Advanced Art in Germany and Sweden 1977 - 2007Mer info
Introduction In the 1980s, it became clear to most professional observers that modernism in art was over. Its bent towards formal abstraction, notions of aesthetic autonomy along with utopian and totalizing tendencies were no longer considered viable. Post-modernism was the new label for the alleged break with modernism. A rough decade and a half later, post-modernism was itself deemed historical, even by standard survey textbooks on world art history. Today, and since the 1990s, the chief terminological competitor to both of these interlinked terms – moder... (Read more)
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Cooperating for sustainable regional marine governance - The case of fisheries and nutrient run-off from agriculture to the Baltic SeaMer info
This interdisciplinary project is focused on preconditions for regional collaboration in relation to environmental governance of the Baltic Sea. Overfishing and eutrophication from agricultural run-off have been selected as case study areas, because of the considerable tensions between natural resourse use and environmental protection objectives in these areas. The major expected outcomes comprise (a) an increased understanding of contemporary governance in these areas and (b) suggestions on how new and improved collaborative schemes could contribute to more effective regional environmen... (Read more)
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This project will analyse how the concepts of minority, national identity, citizenship and power were constructed, transformed and communicated within several specific cosmopolitan milieus, 1870-1914.The project’s main concern is the study of the concept ”cosmopolitan”, and how this ”universal” concept was associated with different views on minorities and national identity. The nationalist awakening which characterised Europe at the end of the nineteenth century originated in early nineteenth-century German thought on the role of language and culture in cons... (Read more)
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This project investigates the creation of national universities in Latvia and Lithuania during the first period of independence, 1919-1940. These new universities are viewed as national institutions carrying great symbolic weight. They were supposed to fulfil the expectations of the intellectuals and politicians of the titular nations: creating institutions of higher education using the national language, forming the aspiring youth of the nation and focussing on the history and culture of the nation. This agenda, however, partly conflicted with an established academic agenda: that appont... (Read more)
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Although critical thinking is a main goal of the Swedish education system, it has no generally accepted definition. The aim of the project is to explore the idea that perspective shift is an important form of critical thinking, especially in practical reasoning, and to discuss didactic consequences of this idea in higher education. Among the themes studied are the didactic applications of rhetorical theories on topos, perspective shift as crtiical presupposition analysis, and creative writing as training in critical self-reflection.
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Cultural and commercial exchange is something inherent
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This project focuses upon a case in point, the Congolese fashion movement La SAPE (La Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elégantes) whose presence and fashion practices in Paris and other European metropolises are expressed as material assertions of European belonging. In recent years, the SAPE phenomenon has spread to several Western metropolitan spaces and to the social forums of the digital landscape, such as YouTube. My research on the topic takes its theoretical point of departure in the revived interest for material and spatial dimensions of cultural sign... (Read more)
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In November 2003, the European Commission adopted the PSI directive. The directive encourages With the aid of the principle of free access to public records, Swedish journalists have for a This project aims to d... (Read more)
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Data-driven journalism is a project between Södertörns University (SH), Swedish Television Pejl The aim of the project alliance is to innovate data-driven journalistic services in Sweden.
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Digital Media Cultures. Audiences, Lifestyles and Generations in the Age of Digital ReproductionMer info
This project focuses on the impact of new, personal and digital media, on the way in which we can understand audience formations, lifestyles and segmentation, and the changing generational experiences connected to a rapidly changing media landscape. The project combines three component studies: Göran Bolin studies the relation between mobile technology and gendered generational experiences. Anna Maria Jönsson analyses the ways in which audiences orient through the vast media landscape, and which lifestyle components interrelate with media use. Peter Jakobsson analyses the music... (Read more)
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Do history and factors in early life contribute to social inequalities in health in the region of former Soviet Union? Evidence from EstoniaMer info
Since the mid-sixties, life expectancy started increasingly to diverge between Western and Eastern parts of Europe. The health crisis in the East deepened after the fall of communism in most of these countries, with concurrent widening of health inequalities between different population groups within countries. Those being socially or economically disadvantaged were less advantaged also in terms of health. The causes and correlates of adult health and health inequalities in Eastern Europe have been addressed in numerous studies. These studies suggest that poor health in this region is la... (Read more)
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Driving Forces for Environmental Policy-Making and Capacity Building in the Baltic Sea Region.Mer info
An integrated study on the environmental history of pollution and protection at national level in the Significance: It is often said that the Baltic Sea is the most polluted, yet the most protected sea in the
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East meets West: Charismatic Christianity and Western Mission in Soviet Union, Russia and UkraineMer info
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the break up of the Soviet Union the peoples around the Baltic Sea have become more interconnected. A number of studies investigating the new economic and political developments have been carried out. One area that has not been given as much attention is that of interreligious relations. The aim of this project is to study relations and encounters between Protestant missionaries from Sweden and indigenous Protestant churches in the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine from the perspective of both the sending and receiving institutions. Among other things... (Read more)
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The main aim of this project is to discuss and problematize ideas and understandings of the cosmopolitical. Cosmopolitanism as an object of academic interest has expanded since the dissolution of the Soviet empire and the end of the Cold War. One purpose is to contribute with a new and instructive perspective on a discourse rather dominated by the social sciences through an analysis from the viewpoint of conceptual history, drawing on the later Koselleck, as well as taking into consideration Gadamer's theory of the history nof effect (Wirkungsgeschichte). In this way, implicit and explic... (Read more)
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ECOPOOL is a multidisciplinary research project that focuses on governance of water resources and related ecosystem services in the Baltic Sea Region. The new demands on institutional arrangements by the EU Water Framework Directive, as well as of changing ecosystems due to e.g. climate change could be viewed as a reorganization phase that implies an increased need for adaptive capacity and transformability. The overall aim of the project is to contribute to an improved understanding of the feedbacks between ecosystems and society for sustainable governance. We use an ecosystem approach... (Read more)
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The over all aim of the project is to
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The gender-neutral pronoun hen has occasionally been used as a generic pronoun in Swedish since at least the sixties, but it spread faster when used to refer to transgendered persons. In 2012 a media debate attracted great attention. Hen has since been seen in children´s books, newspapers, as well as in television subtitles and advertising campaigns. The aim of the project is to map the use of the new pronoun in official Swedish. In Searches will be done in four text domains: newspapers, government... (Read more)
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Endocrine disruption in fish: Effects on behaviour and reproduction, development af biomarkers and assessment of risk levels in the Baltic SeaMer info
Endocrine disruption in fish: Effects on behaviour and reproduction, development of biomarkers and assessment of risk levels in the Baltic Sea Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) interfere with the function of the hormone system of all vertebrates and several non-vertebrate species. A variety of EDCs are found in aquatic environments from industrial contamination and from wastewater, where urinary estrogens and synthetic estrogens used for birth control are important contributors. Evidence from field studies suggests relationship between environmental EDC expos... (Read more)
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Endocrine disruption in fish: Risk identification, development of biomarkers and assessment of risk levels in the Baltic seaMer info
Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) interfere with the function of the hormone system of all vertebrates and several non-vertebrate species. A variety of EDCs are found in aquatic environments from industrial contamination and from wastewater, where urinary estrogens and synthetic estrogens used for birth control are important contributors. Evidence from field studies suggests relationship between environmental EDC exposure and reproductive alterations in fish, and feminisation of male fish living downstream of sewage treatment plants has been observed. Effects of estrogenic chemicals... (Read more)
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Evolutionary adaptation to environmental disturbance in marine ecosystems: genetic ecotoxicology in the Baltic SeaMer info
The proposed project will address the question of if and how biodiversity at the genetic level influence the ability of species and ecosystems to respond to environmental disturbance (pollutants) in theBaltic Sea. Due to its large, heavily populated, industrialized and farmed drainage area, and its long water residence time, a complex mix of contaminants concentrate in the system. Anthropogenic contamination is strongly associated with reductions in the species richness and evenness of marine habitats and theBaltic Seais considered to be one of the most polluted seas in the world. The Ba... (Read more)
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The topic of femininity is at once taken for granted and highly problematic within feminist and gender theory. While gender and queer studies in recent years have theorised masculinities in the plural, femininities have not received the same attention. Instead femininity is often seen as either simply tied to or expressive of female sex, or it is linked to objectification, subordination and sexualisation. This interdiscplinary project aims to theoretically and ethnographically examine some political tensions and fill some scientific gaps with regards to femininity. Inspired by the femini... (Read more)
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Fred,nya identitetskonstruktioner och kosmopolitiska, interkulturella lärandeprocesser i det globaliserade samhället. Ungas värderingar i Östersjöregionen: Tjeckien, Sverige.Mer info
The aim of the project is to investigate if, and in that case, how new identity constructions and cosmopolitan, intercultural learning processes contribute to peaceful or hostile ethnic relations in the multicultural, global society from the point of departure of an investigation about young peoples’ values in the Baltic region: The Czech Republic, Poland and Sweden. The main questions are: How are the attitudes to nonviolence/violence influenced by informal as well as formal learning, including learning by means of media and Internet? How can the concepts positive peace an... (Read more)
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This project aims to increase our understanding of how and under what conditions reforms of national security states are carried through. Empirically, the project focuses on six small states in Northern Europe and their actions after 9/11. The results show that Denmark and the three Baltic States implemented far-reaching reforms while Sweden and Finland opted for continuity. The reactions are explained by differences with respect to threat perceptions, pressure from international institutions, the domestic political context, and the existence of previous rules for counterterrorism.
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The global expansion of capitalism in Eastern Europe has created new structural conditions, new social relations and new cultural patterns. This project explore how people in the interface between Western and Eastern Europe, between post-communism and late-capitalism interpret and manage the For individuals and groups who fall outside the formal economy framework of contractual wages and social rights, the informal sector acts as a survival strategy. However, this in turn lead to their excl... (Read more)
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Going into politics: women in business as policy entrepreneurs in Swedish politics, 1990-2008Mer info
This research explores how, since the 1990s, women in business have become a political issue The research was conducted from 2008-2011 and was funded by Vinnova (the Contact and further information Eva Blomberg, eva.blomberg@sh.se
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This project connects ten senior scholars in the Baltic and East Central Europe countries with Södertörn University for the purpose of conducting cutting edge comparative research on the formation and stability of national governments. In particular, the project examines two aspects of government formation and termination that in the region have not yet been the subject of scholarly inquiry. One of these is coalition governance. Knowledge about this aspect of national politics in the region is today very scarce, both in the international literature and (according to our country... (Read more)
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This research project studies changes in taste structures and cultural preferences among Estonian and Swedish future and current elites (university students). Empirically the project continue an earlier study, conducted at Tartu University and Södertörn University in 2002. Theoretically it strives to answer questions about the role of the media in the formation of taste patterns in relation to changing societal power structures. Following our previous empirical study, a diachronic comparison between the two national student groups can now be made. It is especially important to... (Read more)
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While average life expectancy in Western EU countries increased by almost five years between 1986 and 2008, in several Eastern European countries it is now actually lower than it was twenty years ago. At the same time, the population is rapidly decreasing due to the high mortality and emigration. The project “Health and Population Developments in Eastern Europe in the Conditions of Economic Crisis” focuses on the health and population crises affecting Eastern Europe. In the project, a number of studies concerning these vital areas are being conducted, most of them in Rus... (Read more)
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How Diversity Management makes a difference. A comparative study of how issues of ethnic and national diversity are managed in mass media organizations in Sweden and GermanyMer info
The development towards diversity in the working life is necessary both on the basis of globalization and as a human rights issue. Hence, the main issues of the project are: How do mass media organizations in Sweden and Germany manage diversity issues, such as issues of ethnic and national diversity? And does diversity management make a difference for developing a diversity focus in the media? Mass media have a large influence on what is considered to be a society contributing to equality in opportunities for all citizens. Research in this area has been dominated by normative, and also s... (Read more)
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This project refers to the on-going scientific discussion suggesting that we are currently witnessing convergence in immigrant integration policies in western liberal democracies and in Europe in particular. Indeed, if convergence is taking place, the theoretical implications may indicate that our current models for understanding immigrant integration policy, e.g., assimilationist, multicultural, are either in need of revision or, more radically, obsolete. This project considers the relevance and usefulness of our current theoretical models by categorising and mapping the integration pol... (Read more)
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The project addresses immigrant communities as well as public authorities in three Baltic region countries. The aims of the proposed project include bridging the tools, activities and concepts of citizen communities, on one hand, and the governments’ top-down participation practices and technologies on the other, in terms of interoperability and integration. The expected outcomes materialize as recommendations for the integration of participatory activities of citizen communities with participation-facilitating approaches of governments by means of
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Early modern societies experienced a dynamic development, which in many respects can be explained with the formation of an infrastructure for information, equalling the importance of the internet for today’s globalized world. Seventeenth century’s media revolution (mainly founded on postal services, printed and manuscript news forms) multiplied the flow of information accessible for the contemporaries. This caused a modernization on different levels of society. Information itself turned into a commodity, traded on a vastly
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Instititutional constraints and creative solutions: Civil society in Poland in comparative perspectiveMer info
The project examines the conditions for mobilization of civil society and for collective action strategies in Poland. Poland is also put in perspective by comparisons with some of its neighboring countries: the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Sweden. The project includes among other things studies of urban movements and mobilizations around housing issues, mobilizations around parenthood, but also environmental and animal rights activism. We would like to problematize the conventional view of the weak civil society in Poland and other post-communist societies. One of our po... (Read more)
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IODP Baltic Sea Expedition 347 - History of the Baltic Sea Basin during the last 130000 yearsMer info
IODP Baltic Sea Expedition 347 - History of the Baltic Sea Basin during the last 130000 years During Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 347, sediments from Climate and sea level dynamics of marine oxygen isotope Stage (MIS) 5, including onsets and terminations, The complexities of the last glacial (MIS 4–MIS 2), Glacial and Holocene climate forcing (MIS... (Read more)
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Islands of Identity: Identity Building on Bornholm, Gotland, Åland, Saaremaa and Hiiumaa, 1800–200Mer info
The project will study regional identity making on five large Baltic islands – Bornholm, Gotland, Åland, Saaremaa, and Hiiumaa – during the 19th and 20th centuries. The interplay between subnational identity ideologies on the one hand and nationalism and supranational projects on the other will be examined. Thereby we will contribute to the still developing field of analysing identity making in other settings than purely ethnical or national ones. The overall outline is comparative: what differences are there between the islands, in various epochs and political settings... (Read more)
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The aim is to investigate journalism education in relation to models of journalism and professional values in Russia (M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University), Finland (University of Jyväskylä), Estonia (University of Tartu), Poland (University of Warsaw) and Sweden (Södertörn University). In the last conference of IMCR (2008) many papers were presented in the field with national or “western” basis. The new approach here is to compare countries that seldom appear in the same study and to contribute to a theory of journalism education. ... (Read more)
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Journalism is a key factor in public sphere, in political communication as well as in formation of identities in society. New digital technology, increased commercial pressure and the growth of a network society changes the conditions for journalism - but is it changing in the same way in different media systems? How are journalistic practices and values influenced by the media development in different media systems? The purpose of the project is to study how professional journalistic cultures are influenced by media development in three different media systems: Sweden, Poland and Russia... (Read more)
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Technocult is the acronym for the research programme Technologies of Culture – Cultures of Technology, which is dedicated to the analysis of techno-cultural phenomena in the contemporary, its roots in the past, and its consequences for the future. The programme binds together a range of closely connected themes within the humanities, which have been developed within multi-disciplinary projects at Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. The themes concern culture in its social as well as aesthetic sense, and especially the mechanisms by which knowledge and values... (Read more)
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This project is part of an evaluation by the Swedish National Agency for Education concerning their National School Leadership Training Programme. Our aim in the project is to understand how changes in school practices come about, and the (potential) role of training programs in such transformations. We follow seven schools (big and small, public and private etc.) during a five year-period, mainly through repeated interviews.
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The aim of the study is to broaden the knowledge-base on regulation and practices of surveillance in post-communist societies. The purpose is to develop our understanding of how surveillance as social sorting interacts with relationships of trust in post-communist societies, between citizens and towards the state. The project consists of three parts: (A) A general overview over surveillance practices in 17 European post-communist states with focus on video surveillance; (B) an international survey on surveillance, privacy, and social sorting in the Ukraine, Poland and Estonia; and (C) a... (Read more)
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Living Archives: Pontus Hultén at Moderna Museet Stockholm and Centre Pompidou in Paris, 1957-81Mer info
The aim of this investigation is to reconstruct and analyse the work of the Swedish curator and museum director Pontus Hultén (1924-2006) as it comes down not only in images, words and published books; but in practices. The temporal frame is the period between 1957 and 1981. Hultén was employed at Moderna Museet as a curator in 1957 and became its director in 1960. In 1973, he began work on a new cultural house in central Paris: Centre Pompidou. He led the institution until 1981. Pompidou became the world’s second most visited museum (Louvre being on the top of the li... (Read more)
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Loss of grounds as common ground: an interdisciplinary investigation of the common beyond liberal and communitarian claimsMer info
The project represents an interdisciplinary study within the fields of political philosophy, philosophy and literature. It aims to investigate the notions of "the common" and the "loss of the common" in relation to the conditions of modern society. These phenomenon are analyzed with reference to the political experiences of the 20th century that divided Europe. The project attempts to conceptualize the impact of these notions and thereby reconsider the central idea of "commonality" in political philosophy. It envisages the concept of a common ground for society that lies beyond universal... (Read more)
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"Making Sense of Aisthesis: The Return of Sensibility" contributes to to a vivid international debate concerning a contemporary ”aesthetic turn”. Our lifeworld has been aestheticized to an extraordinary degree, whilst at the same time our way of looking at the world has been affected by medias and technologies enhancing the experience of a new kind of sensibility. How are we to understand the aesthetic turn? The academic study of aesthetics is concerned with perception, i.e. the capacity of the human body to approach the world. ”Aesthetics” is referring to the Gre... (Read more)
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MARKETS & REGIONS A project on region building and the long term sustainability and potential integrative effects of capital mobility and investment in the Baltic Sea RegionMer info
Establishment of markets and creation of regions are acknowledged as slow and incremental processes, but there are also examples of rapid and revolving changes, which can deepen or completely change earlier patterns. Such a revolutionary change was the 1989 downfall of the Soviet system in Eastern Europe, which created completely new conditions for the flow of trade, investments and services between countries that hitherto had been separated despite the geographic proximity. The Nordic countries have since long tried to find different venues to increase the integration between th... (Read more)
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MARKETS & REGIONS A project on region building and the long term sustainability and potential integrative effects of capital mobility and investment in the Baltic Sea RegionMer info
Establishment of markets and creation of regions are acknowledged as slow and incremental processes, but there are also examples of rapid and revolving changes, which can deepen or completely change earlier patterns. Such a revolutionary change was the 1989 downfall of the Soviet system in Eastern Europe, which created completely new conditions for the flow of trade, investments and services between countries that hitherto had been separated despite the geographic proximity. The Nordic countries have since long tried to find different venues to increase the integration between th... (Read more)
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The project is a gender theoretical and historical study of masculinity as a cultural construction. By focusing on masculinity, the project aims to critically investigate the gender-coding of the modern political subject, as a man and as a citizen. The project investigates how masculinity changes over time, during the long 19th Century, and the primary material consists mainly of fiction, which is sourced from countries in the Baltic region. Otherwise, the project's multidisciplinary approach and in addition to scientific literature, gender studies and historical tools will also politica... (Read more)
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Media Discourses on Material and Ethnic Gaps. A comparative study in St. Petersburg and Stockholm.Mer info
The overriding questions of the project are: How do the media illuminate and explain people's uneven material resources and ethnic positions? How do the media discourses tally with people's notions of the material and ethnic gaps in society and the causes of these gaps? How are these notions connected with the individuals' own material resources and ethnic belonging? The questions are answered by way of analyses of the media discourses in St. Petersburg and Stockholm, as well as by qualitative group interviews with inhabitants in the two cities.
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Media Use as Value-Generating Labour: Perceptions on the Role of Media Use in Digital Media MarketsMer info
Continuously more of our media consumption is conducted through digitised, web-based computer and mobile phone use. Such extensions of our media behaviour into the digital realms of mobile and personal media and web-based services (search engines, social networking sites, etc.) have brought with it the development of new business models within the media and culture industries. These models build on deep knowledge on the personal features and digital behaviours of media users. In the wake of this development a discussion on the role of media users in terms of labour has arisen. Pa... (Read more)
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Media, Communication, and the Social Performance of Environmentalism: Comparing Ecological Collectives on Two Sides of the Baltic SeaMer info
Sustainable development means changing how people act and think. This means understanding how humans conceptualize and communicate about nature, how they can be motivated, collectively, to act, and what pre-existing social roles might influence their actions. In this project, three humanists analyse and compare three collectives which set out to create new ecological roles: the emotional community formed by activists’ face-to-face interaction, the virtual collective of the ecological blog, and the ‘imagined’ communities of eco-nationalist newspaper readers. We are inter... (Read more)
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Academic research, and companies working on waste management or in the agrifood sector, are constantly searching for new sustainbly produced enzymes that are capable of degrading recalcitrant natural molecules or pollutants of human origin. The enormous diversity of the microbial communities in the environment offer a unique potential for the discovery of novel natural bioremeditating or biocontrol enzymes. Such enzymes, offer new perspectives for companies involved in environmental pollution control or clean up, or working with agricultural/pharmaceutical/chemical/foods sectors.
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Molecular epidemiology, molecular evolution and vaccine development of Tick-borne encephalitis virus within the Baltic Sea regionMer info
Arthropod-borne flaviviruses are a serious factor for morbidity and mortality, including Tick-Borne Encephalitis virus (TBEV) causing severe and sometimes fatal CNS disease. Several factors, including climate-changes, have affected the TBEV distribution with significant outcome on the risks for human infections within the Baltic Sea region (Donoso Mantke et al., 2008, Randolph, 2008, Sumilo et al., 2007, Suss, 2003). In addition, new reports further indicate frequent TBEV vaccin-breakthrough with excisting vaccines. TBEV can be subdivided into three subtypes, Western European (W-... (Read more)
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The project's overarching objective is to study how gender discrimination has become the subject of political decisions and measures at the intersection between supranational organs, states, collectives and individuals during the period 1980-2008. We will examine the introduction of the gender discrimination ombudsman, as well as how ideas and institutions have spread to parts of Eastern Europe. We are interested in the way in which human rights have been made a matter of social concern. The detailed studies that are part of the project concern three leve... (Read more)
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Music use in the online media age: A qualitative study of music cultures among young people in Moscow and StockholmMer info
This research project investigates the role of the Internet in music use in contemporary society. The backdrop to the project is the digitalization of society and culture, where the music industry is transforming rapidly, and where the Internet, for young people in particular, is changing listening modes and, possibly, meanings of music. Changes include the shift from offline to online music listening, from album listening to single song downloads, and file-sharing and communicative activities within online social media. Our objective is to find out what these developments mean on the us... (Read more)
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Mångfaldslinjer: Journalistisk produktion ur ett mångkulturellt perspektiv i Stockholm och BerlinMer info
Our project aimed at increasing knowledge about journalistic production processes with a focus on ethnic diversity, based on empirical research in Swedish and German newsrooms. Simply, we wanted to know: How do journalists with migrant backgrounds experience their working conditions, career possibilities, and their possibilities of influencing media coverage? How does ethnic diversity contribute to a changed media coverage? Our method was primarily based on semi-structured interviews with editorial staff working on permanent contracts or/and fixed – term contracts, and with freelan... (Read more)
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This project investigates how Europe is identified in narratives from East Europe. It focuses on how "Europeanness" is fabricated and narrated in one of Europe's dynamic peripheries. Focusing on the region's philosophical, political, literary, musical, art and media discourses, a systematic and comparative analysis is made of how European identity is articulated differently depending on national context and narrative genre. The project thus makes comparisons in three dimensions: how does the narration of European identity vary (1) between centre and periphery; (2) between national subreg... (Read more)
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Nation branding – where nation-states in conjunction with international branding consultants execute marketing campaigns for their own country in order to attract investors and tourists – has grown both as a phenomenon and as an area of research the past decade. However, those who have analysed nation branding have either been deeply involved in the activities themselves, or have confused the branding process with the construction of national identities. In Bolin & Ståhlberg (2010) we took issue with this approach, arguing for the analytical separation of nation bui... (Read more)
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National mobilization strategies and transnational networking: Social movements in East and WestMer info
The project aims at studying and comparing the societal conditions for mobilization of civil society and collective action in Eastern and Western Europe. More precisely, the project will study and compare the forms of action of three social movements: the animal rights movement, the women's movement and the social justice movement (or alterglobalization movement). Previous research has often pointed to the weakness of civil society in Eastern Europe. Is that so, or is civil society functioning dynamically but in a different way than in Western Europe? Social movement organizations in Eas... (Read more)
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The last decade bear witness to massive changes within Shi‘ite Islam. Since Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979, Ruhollah Khomeini’s ideological and theological idea that Islamic jurists should wield di-rect political power has vastly dominated the discourse and everyday practice of Twelver Shi‘ites worldwide. This is now changing. In Iran, the Khomeinist system is challenged in hitherto unseen ways and critique of the dominating ideology is articulated also within the Islamist establishment. In Iraq, the American invasion of 2003 has led to drastically increased po... (Read more)
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People’s worldviews are the result of negotiations on several levels. In our daily life, we meet various types of knowledge that we aware or unaware judge and use. This affects our identities and our relationship to other people. In the late modern, globalised world, such negotiations are particularly apparent. For example in big cities where people of various cultural, religious, linguistic backgrounds live together. The pluralism that exists today in many European cities, lead to discussions about public values and worldviews, where nothing is “given”. From one perspe... (Read more)
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This project is dedicated to the study of populism in Europe, with a particular emphasis on the Baltic Sea Area, Eastern and Central Europe. The main purpose is to produce theoretically grounded knowledge about populism based on comparative research. The researchers represent three disciplines: political science, sociology and history. The rationale for the multidisciplinary research is to address general questions on populism explicitly aimed at theory building. More precisely, the populist parties and forces are studied as political actors that are faced with a... (Read more)
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Panegyrics, Publicity and Political Communication within the Swedish Baltic Empire c. 1620-1740Mer info
The project, which is multi-disciplinary, focuses on how the extensive printed epideictic literature addressed to the Swedish royal persons c. 1620-1740 served as a medium for political communication within the Swedish Baltic empire. Panegyrics printed for weddings, funerals and other occasions occupied a central position in early modern literature, and in Sweden a large number of poems and orations were addressed to the royal persons at dynastic and political events. In previous research these writings have usually been read as manifestations of the regime’s ideology, and... (Read more)
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Perceptions of the other; aesthetics, ethics and prejudice studies the relation between prejudice, perceptive predisposition and aesthetic expression. The project brings three parts of study together: Prejudice, tolerance and aesthetic translatability; the cultural boundaries of sensibility. (German philosophy of the 18th century), The Protoethics of perceptual life. Perception and ethics in the field of phenomenology and psychoanalysis; (German philosophy of the 20th century). Postdoctoral project, Politics of representation; Jewish identity in recent art. (Contemporary artists of an Ea... (Read more)
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The purpose of the project is to contribute to empathy theory by suggesting solutions to three fundamental problems, namely, by what non-theory-based criteria the validity of empathy-based explanations can be assessed, how the notion of empathetic understanding is to be understood, and how such understanding relates to theory-based explanation of action. Empathetic understanding is understood as atheoretical (intuitive),contrastive and perspective-relative, nonmentalistic), and based on agreement as an atheoretical criterion of validity.
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Since 2000 former port areas in Swedish cities are increasingly being transformed into mainly residential areas with some elements of commercial activities, offices and service functions. This is a rather late process compared to other international examples. These areas were among the first large-scale projects in Sweden which were supposed to follow the new national strategies for sustainable development.
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This research project is about migration of highly skilled labour. Empirically focus are om doctors in health care. Doctors represent a seemingly universal profession, sharing a set of competences and a partly similar view on their role as doctors. The aim is to produce knowledge about doctors' occupational cultures by describing and analysing their experiences of work places comprising personnel with different national origin, working side by side. To what degree do the medical education and the professional skills override possible cultural differences? Does the cooperation with immigr... (Read more)
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In the light of the present debate on how to define the concept of political culture, the project Rhetoric and Political Culture aims at scrutinizing the importance and purpose of rhetoric in the early-modernSweden. Rhetoric was extremely important for the Swedish state and the study of it was encouraged by the Government. In the Swedish provinces around theBaltic Sea, different languages were spoken and therefore it was important to maintain an education that promoted linguistic and rhetorical abilities in order to keep the provinces culturally and politically together. The proj... (Read more)
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This research project focuses on Stockholm's municipal politics after 1945. It has three main themes: - the city of Stockholm and its surroundings - political parties - politics and the organisation of democracy How has the city of Stockholm acted in relation to its surroundings (neighbouring municipalities, the region, state and EU)? How have parties and politics changed since 1945? How has the city organised its democratic government? Research is led by Professor Torbjörn Nilsson from the Institute of Contemporary Hi... (Read more)
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The overall aim of the project is to analyse growth in Swedish state-owned companies, as well as three phases of privatisation, through an explicit comparison with the experience of privatisation in former planned economies. One precondition for successful privatisation is regarded as setting definite goals (financial, political or ideological), but also a clean execution, with clear rules and a transparent process. The proposed project consists of three complementary yet distinct parts, providing an overall picture of state ownership and privatisation in Sweden. Part 1 analyses... (Read more)
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Public Discourse and Environmental Risks: Exploring a gas pipeline plan and flooding scenarios in the Baltic Sea RegionMer info
Environmental risks transcend traditional boundaries and raise a need for new governing and communication strategies. It also challenges the role of knowledge since risk governance often is about un-known futures. What implications does this have for democracy, policy-making and the role of the citizen? In this study we wish to analyze the framing of risk issues and how different governance structures affect conditions for deliberation, communication and knowledge. The aim of the project is to analyze the framing of environmental risk issues and th... (Read more)
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In what sense are people religious in the big cities around the Baltic Sea today? Recent research gives clear evidence that people in late modern societies combine seemingly incommensurable religious beliefs and practices in their everyday lives.[1] For instance, people simultaneously define themselves as both Buddhist and Christian, or describe themselves as Muslim whilst still celebrating Christian holidays. Despite of this insight, almost every research project within History of religions defines its material based on traditional denominational borders – researchers study Sunni... (Read more)
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Rhetoric in the Construction of the Modern State - a Study on the Relationships between Culture, Language and National IdentityMer info
The 17th century is referred to as the period of high power in Swedish history. It was a time of considerable social mobility. New groups in society rose to positions of power and influence as the Swedish realm expanded around the Baltic Sea. The expansion of the state gave rise to a shortage of educated employees, civil servants and craftsmen. This led to the emergence of new social structures which made it possible for groups, who had previously been excluded from power, to gain access to positions of social influence. Informal networks were formed, and these served as a replac... (Read more)
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Environmental risk governance in the Baltic Sea is still unable to fully support the implementation of the ecosystem approach to management. Hence, the aims and expected outcomes of RISKGOV are: 1) to improve our understanding of the structures and processes that shape the governance of environmental risks; 2) to suggest a normative framework for improving environmental risk governance in the Baltic Sea. These aims will be achieved by integrating social and natural science approaches on five strategically selected environmental risks (eutrophication, overfishing, invasive alien species,... (Read more)
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The project aims to study whether - and how - a shift focus on large scale agriculture to small-scale, environmentally friendly niche production, followed by local refinement to localized and certified quality products (including a focus on building local brands), can help to reverse the negative trend for agriculture - and thus for employment, population, services, etc. - that characterizes large parts of the Swedish countryside, especially in the forest and between districts. This has happened in many parts of Europe in general. By analyzing the situation in Sweden and compare it with... (Read more)
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Service encounters at a distans – elderly or disabled persons in Sweden ordering transportation service from call centres in Moldova and SwedenMer info
In the globalized job market of today, businesses are increasingly turning to call service centres located abroad to provide customer support. This project concerns Swedish call centres that have been outsourced from Sweden to Moldavia. The aim is to investigate how telephone calls in Swedish can be managed by these call centres, where the operators have been trained in Swedish at an intensive course, provided by the company. The approach is to compare telephone calls of a similar kind received at a call centre in Sweden. We intend to examine communicative dilemmas in the interaction of... (Read more)
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SILNE – Tackling socioeconomic inequalities in smoking: learning from natural experiments by time trend analyses and cross-national comparisonsMer info
Within most European populations, smoking prevalence rates differ substantially according to people’s educational level, occupational class and income level. In northern European countries, smoking inequalities are generally largest, and smoking is the largest single contributor to socio-economic inequalities in mortality. Significant inequalities in smoking are now emerging in all European countries, especially in the youngest generations. Several effective interventions and programs are now available to address smoking in Europe. These include bans on smoking in public pl... (Read more)
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The project deals with Soviet nationalities politics towards Nordic minorities on The main idea of this project is to apply the conceptual frameworks of genocide
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Whether fiction, non-fiction, philosophy and theory, official ideology, or autobiography, the writing of the Stalinist period (1920-50s) bears in itself traces of a unique corporeality created by wars, terror, famine, and wide-ranging administrative manipulations of the population that deeply penetrated if not constituted the Soviet collective body. In this project, Sandomirskaja is suggesting a new concept for the theoretical reading of the written production of the time, created in the USSR and dedicated to the key problems of Soviet history and society. The idea is to unite in one met... (Read more)
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Through an investigation relating to the concepts of space, power, and ideology, the project aspires to determine central aspects of what a critical theory of architecture and the visual arts could mean today. This comprises a genealogy of the philosophical condition for critical theory today, which must transcend the parameters defined by the classical Frankfurt School, in order to understand contemporary artistic practices. Central problem facing such a theory relate to the status of affectivity and resistance, in a society that has been defined as a “society of control” (D... (Read more)
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The point of the multidisciplinary TRATEBBB research project is to investigate the politics, didactics, ideas, and spatial setting of religious (and by extension civic) education in the Baltic-Barent area. Four sites are included in the project, each studying religious and civic education in a pair of twin cities/municipalities across four state borders. These four liminal sites (and eight local cases) are: Kirkenes-Zapolyarnyi, Imatra-Svetogorsk, Valga-Valka, and Ahlbeck/Heringsdorf-Swinoujscie. The project thus operates empirically in seven countries: Norway, Russia, Finland, Estonia,... (Read more)
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The project, which has been running primarily during the period 2007-2010, relates to an international discussion within contemporary continental cultural theory, aesthetics, and philosophy. It connects to a
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Voluntary famine relief has saved innumerable lives over the past two centuries and exemplifies the practical workings of what current discourse calls global civil society. This project addresses contemporary discussions on NGOs and global civil society, correlating their topical issues, for historical analysis, in the concept of ‘moral economy’. Four studies of representative cases highlight distinct periods of transnational humanitarianism: the Irish potato famine 1845–1851 shows how early civil society worked across borders; the Soviet famine of 1921–1922 illus... (Read more)
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The project, which was carried out 2006 - 2010, studied the process and effects of the communications revolution in the Baltic region during the long 17th century. Its focus was the origin of a postal system in Sweden and in the Swedish provinces on the other side of the Baltic Sea, the postal system as a communications system, and postmasters who became communications experts who were not only responsible for post and news distribution, but also financial transactions. A small part of the project focused on the users and how various communication channels were used to spread news of pol... (Read more)
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The body as gift, resource and commodity: Organ transplantation in the Baltic region Running: 2008-2011 The purpose of the project is to examine from a multidisciplinary basis a medical technology in a state of rapid change: organ transplantation. From perspectives in ethnology, the history of ideas, and philosophy, individuals’ and society’s views on the body in the case of organ transplantation are studied – how norms and values regarding the body are engendered and have consequences for the way the activity of transplantation is organised. The ambitio... (Read more)
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The view that cultural policy should reinforce values such as personal and intellectual development, gender equality and democracy has prevailed for many years. Culture has been described as “democracy’s soul”, and cultural diversity as the characteristic that defines “human values”. Although, from a historical viewpoint, economic considerations have been a critical factor for most active participants in the cultural arena, such aspects have, for the most part, been regarded as of minor importance. This is no longer the case today. Ideas about the measuremen... (Read more)
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The development of Russian financial market and its institutional actors: From the fall of the Soviet Union to the financial crisis 2008 .Mer info
The overall purpose of the project is to investigate the emergence and further development of the Russian financial markets' institutional structure between 1990 and 2008 and how this development was influenced by informal practices applied by economic actors. The project will be based on empirical investigations by applying interdisciplinary methods of economic history and sociology. Douglass North's institutional theory and the Russian-British sociologist Alena Ledeneva's concept of informal practices will underpin the research methodology of the project. The following research... (Read more)
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The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. The Urban Arenas of the Baltic Middle Classes. A “Long 19th Century” Study.Mer info
The aim of the project is to study the development of the bourgeoisie in urban centres around the Baltic Sea during ’the long 19th century’ (1789–1914). The transformation of the bourgeoisie, from the enfranchised burgesses within a society of estates, through the ‘middling orders’ or Mittelstand, to the more elusive middle classes, will be studied from a centre–periphery-perspective, with an established centre – Germany – related to the border areas of Sweden, Finland and the Baltic area. A starting point for the project is... (Read more)
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The Baltic region plays no prominent role in standard works on the history of European universities. This project will thus fill an important gap by focusing on the universities around the Baltic Sea in the period 1600-1800. The empirical material will, to a large extent, consist of dissertations, orations and lectures, occasional poetry, letters and records and reports of the academic proceedings that will be analysed in order to give us a better understanding of the academic culture. The research will deal with very different issues – e.g. official rules and acade... (Read more)
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The emergence of racism. On beliefs about language use and linguistic discrimination among two professional groups in Sweden and GermanyMer info
English summary: Linguistic choices play an important role in how we identify and classify each other and ourselves, i.e. we speak and refer to each other by using linguistic categories. In this project we want to examine how pejorative language use is perceived, what classifies as pejoratives, how this is construed and in other ways contextualized. We intend to compare attitudes to pejoratives and their actual use Germany and Sweden, two countries with quite different general approaches to discrimination and discourses regarding for example racism. To speak badly of a gr... (Read more)
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The project is dedicated to the work by Ol'ga Skorokhova (1911--1982), "the Soviet Helen Keller": a deaf-blind author and scholar, a representative of the Soviet school of "defectology" (a Stalinist version of special education and disability studies). Sandomirskaja is reading her autobiographical fragments trying to understand Skorokhodova's experience in inventing techniques of perception and communication in the absence of vision, hearing, and language (a condition comparable to what Walter Benjamin called "mere life", and Giorgio Agamben analyzed politically as "bare life"). Sandomir... (Read more)
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The Idea of the “Good” Public Employer This project aims at an institutional analysis of the emergence and transformation of “the Public Employer” in terms of ideas and their practical implementation - how the local and central Swedish state organised welfare services. The study covers the liberal changes in the 19-th century, the democratic breakthrough in the 1920s and the post-war expansion of the welfare state. The study hence focus on the conditions for ongoing transformations of welfare services especially concerning the infrastructural role and orga... (Read more)
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Delegation and organizational design within central government, from the ministries to the authorities, has been little studied by economists, despite the obvious applicability of the principal-agent perspective. Much of the existing literature has dealt with central banks, but the theoretical literature has broadened its perspective recently. This project will focus on particular design issues, including the determination of the authorities' size/scope, their internal decision-making (collegial or by a single individual; with or without a board) and the formal and informal (ince... (Read more)
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The influence of political territorial hierarchies on local development and relations in cross-border areas - The role of Szczecin as central place in relation to the divided Pomeranian hinterlandMer info
The aim of the project is to analyze and evaluate the role of the City of Szczecin in relation to the theoretical hinterland of Eastern Vorpommern (Germany) and Western Pomorze (Poland) with special reference to the impact of the state boundary before and after Poland’s entry into the European Union and its possible entry into the Schengen regime. We will try to find the factors that explain developments on different levels. Each factor can be the subject of a major study within the project (a post-doc monograph or a dissertation theme) a) The importance of super-national d... (Read more)
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The purpose of this research program is to create a historical overview of Sweden's democratic and political project of gender equality, a project that has developed over more than thirty years. As yet, we do not have such an outline - either in terms of a firm body of knowledge on the subject, that is, the activities, people involved, and means employed; or in terms of how equality is interpreted and implemented within various organisations. This does not, of course, mean that we are totally ignorant on these subjects. There exist numerous studies on them; but these provide know... (Read more)
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The research project “The Labour Movement in the Baltic Sea Region (Arioso)” has been working as a close-nit research environment at Södertörn University since 1997. In different constellations but with a constant inner circle the project has since then systematically tackled its main focus: To understand the general outlines of the social development in the Baltic Sea region during “the short 20th century” by focusing on the two branches of the labour movement, social democracy and communism and their endeavour to... (Read more)
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The Missing Pillar: Incorporating the social dimension in transnational sustainability projectsMer info
Aim, research questions, and method The notion of sustainable development is usually divided into an economic, environmental, and social (or socio-cultural) pillar or dimension, implying that a practice cannot be fully sustainable without the integration and achievement of all these dimensions. Synergies among them cannot be taken-for-granted, however. As recent research indicated trade-offs and conflicts among them, our research team aimed at highlighting the challenges experienced in various sustainability projects to integrate these dimensions, and particularly by focusing the... (Read more)
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The myth of “Judeo-Bolshevism”, i.e. the idea that the Russian Revolution and communism were expressions of the Jewish spirit and a desire for power, was an important factor in the ideological and political life of the interwar period in the Baltic region. The purpose of this research is to illuminate to what extent – and how – Bolshevism and Judaism were interconnected in Swedish politics and the public sphere during the years after the Russian Revolution and World War I. The project also covers how this interconnection was carried into t... (Read more)
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When and where did political and moral philosophy, in the sense of systematic inquiry into the normative foundations of society, originate? When asking about the beginnings of a phenomenon, we always presuppose some sort of understanding of this phenomenon - however vague and rudimentary this understanding may be. In that sense, this project is not only historical but systematic as well: it will argue for a certain understanding of political and moral philosophy and search for the traces of its earliest developments. It is often assumed that the history of political philosophy begins wit... (Read more)
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The paradoxes of the Polish cultural identity (Representations of "West" and "East" in the polish literature in exile after the end of World War II).Mer info
The over-all aim of the project is to study cultural identity discourses in Polish exile literature after 1945 using M. Foucault’s discourse theory and a post-colonial perspective on cultural identity (S. Hall, F. Fanon, H. Bhabha). The project will examine the Polish identity discourses by analysing Polish exile writers’ and essayists’ attitudes to the formative events of post-war Europe (among them the cultural crisis, the rebuilding of a unified Western Europe, the consolidation of the Eastern bloc, the “cold war”). The project will also analyse the cultu... (Read more)
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The Roma Genocide in Ukraine 1941-44: History, memories and representations The project adresses the nature of the Nazi policy towards Roma in Ukraine during the WWII, its implementation, and the numbers of murdered Roma; the mechanics of the memory work among the group and the impact of the state (Ukrainian Soviet Republic and post-1991 Ukraine) commemoration policies on the historical memory of the genocide among the general public and the Roma.
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The purpose of the project is to study the new security situation in the Baltic Sea region during the interwar period. The main focus is on small states, where the military was one of the prime tools in transmitting of ideas. Previous research has mainly dealt with the bipolar world during the Cold War, while the multipolar system during the interwar period is unexplored. Central to the study is the build up of military potential, or the transition of the national armed forces in Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Poland, but the entire Baltic Sea region is of interest. Our focus is on... (Read more)
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The significance of the Swedish language and exile in Sweden for aesthetic renewal in Peter Weiss’ contribution to 20th century Modernism.Mer info
The German speaking author and playwright Peter Weiss (1916-82), who lived and died in exile in Sweden, achieved late recognition West Germany for his modernist prose (1959-62). Following this, he achieved his international breakthrough with the innovative drama Marat/Sade (1964) and the ambitious novel trilogy, Ästhetik des Widerstands (1975-81), which synthesises the political and aesthetic currents of the 20th century in the antifascist resistance movement. However, Peter Weiss’ innovative Modernist idiom can be traced back to the works and texts he wrote in Swedish in the... (Read more)
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The story of crucian carp (Carassius carassius) in the Baltic Sea region - History and a possible futureMer info
The overall purpose of this research project is to focus, in an interdisciplinary perspective, on the history and current status of crucian carp, Carassius carassius (L.), in the Baltic Sea region, and to evaluate the species´ future potential in aquaculture on a local basis. It is very likely that the escalating problems in world fisheries and aquaculture based on predatory fish will result in increasing interest in omnivorous and herbivore species. The project is composed of three closely interlinked parts. One part is based on the history of the crucian carp in human us... (Read more)
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The EU Structural Funds belong to the most tangible aspects of Europeanisation and are of vital importance for the new EU member states in Central and Eastern Europe. These countries are also good instances of a more general topic concerning state development: whereas some states tend to mobilise economic resources internally, other states tend to gather a larger share of their resources externally. The basic thrust of this short, yet concentrated, study is to follow the flow of the Structural Funds through the state apparatuses in a small selection of countries within the region... (Read more)
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The struggle for culture. A study of the culture of political change in Lithuania and Sweden.Mer info
Cultural policy has traditionally emphasized culture as a means to promote values of education and refinement, equality, and democracy. While economic considerations have also been important, these concerns have mostly been treated as subordinate. Today, this is no longer the case. Ideas about profit and loss, and economic accounting, permeate all organizations in the field, and lately the political discussions have come to center on cultural policy as an instrument for economic growth and innovation within the “creative industry”. An ideational shift has taken place and it i... (Read more)
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The overall aim of the project is to study changes to the Swedish state since 1940. The research is based on empirical studies of the changes that have taken place and what they actually resulted in, regarding the state’s organisation, control and ideology. The aim is not to define how all the changes to the Swedish state have been implemented, not is it to "fill the gaps" in previous research. Our aim is to explore some themes that we feel have not yet been adequately studied. Themes
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The Vision of Eurasia: Eurasianist Influences on Politics, Culture and Ideology in Russia TodayMer info
The aim of this project is to evaluate the degree to which the concepts, arguments, and tropes of Eurasianism have penetrated across public and political life in Russia today. Originally formulated by Russian émigré nationalists in the 1920s and 1930s, Eurasianism represented an entirely new vision of Russia as Russia-Eurasia: a distinct and autonomous historical world stretching from Russia's western borderlands east to the Pacific. Beginning in the late 1980s, these old doctrines were rediscovered and began to be resurrected. They were appealing because they offered a com... (Read more)
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In spring 1961 the Soviet Union broadcast live images through the Iron Curtain for the first time in history. The broadcasts suggested a possible future of television as an integral part of a symbolic struggle where images could travel without regard to national borders and political landscapes. In hindsight these broadcasts have earned a minor role in the history of transnational television, clearly overshadowed by the introduction of US satellite television a few years later. With this in mind the aim of the project is to understand how early Soviet transnational broadcasts at he heigh... (Read more)
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Time, Memory and Representation is a research program that gathers 25 scholars from 14 different disciplines, for a joint exploration and development of recent transformations in historical consciousness, and its implications for the human and historical sciences. The program is funded by Riksbankens jubileumsfond (The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Donation). It is organized from Södertörn University, but researchers are recruited from all six major universities in Sweden (Uppsala, Lund, Stockholm, Göteborg, Linköping, and Umeå). Further, an international board of... (Read more)
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This project explores three temporal forms used by television for historical representation: the time of the chronicle, which organizes successive flows of time through documentaries, drama series, annual chronicles; the time of catastrophe, as in live broadcasts of traumatic events where history is represented as catastrophe, crisis, disaster, as a break in the flow of time; the time of ritual, as in the televised, pre-planned ceremonial events (Olympic games, presidential inaugurations) that invite audiences to witness history in the making. Its main hypothes... (Read more)
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Translatability; aesthetics and the transformation of the public sphere in an era of globalizationMer info
In this age of globalization, all cultures may seem connected with one another. The question what is to be considered "original" and what is to be regarded as a translation may no longer seem relevant. All cultures are continuosly being transformed through an ongoing process of translation. Rather than considering the question of translation as an inevitable process, however, we may take issue with it. What is translation? Are there limits to translatability? What kind of resistances to translatability way we encounter? Walter Benjamin, in his famous essay, “The Task of the... (Read more)
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Urban Social Movements in the Post-Soviet Context: Opportunity Structures and Local Activism in Moscow and VilniusMer info
This project studies local activist groups in Moscow and Vilnius, active in the field of housing and local environment, thus contributing to the sparse literature on local urban activism in the post-Soviet context. The general aim is to explain why urban social movements in this social context embrace particular strategies in their quest to influence policy decisions and defend their interests. The theoretical and empirical contribution of the project is related to revising approaches to the political opportunity structure of local urban movements. This includes studying how diff... (Read more)
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Value and the Media. An Inquiry Into the Production and Consumption of Value in Media IndustriesMer info
Against the background of significant shifts in media production over the past decades, the aim with the project is to analyse how economic and aesthetic or cultural value is created in relation to new forms of production. With the main example taken from television production, web news production, music distribution and online gaming, this project aims at developing a theoretical model of how value is produced in the larger field of media production, and how the new forms of value production can be related to changes in that same field over the last couple of decades. Especially... (Read more)
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How did Sweden become a wine consuming and producing country? This is the main question answered by this project. Commercial wine production is a new in Sweden, but people have previously tried to establish vineyards - without success. In pre-industrial times wine was quite expensive and therefore consumed only by the court, the nobility and the church. But during the 2oth Century, increased household income, state efforts to decrease vodka consumption and changing living habits were some of the main reasons behind a shift in consumption that made this vodka country into a wine lovers pa... (Read more)
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The aim of this project is to study online virtual world Second Life as an everyday culture. Studies of virtual worlds have often tended to focus on the imaginary or boundary-breaking elements of Internet culture. This project, though, examines the way that everyday life is constructed and communicated within Second Life; looking at how time, space, routines and normality are established within the virtual world. By approaching the research through phenomenological and anthropological theories of everyday life, the project will enlarge our understanding of everyday life in modern society... (Read more)
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The aim of the project, as described in the application to Vinnova in the spring of 2002, has been to "study the conditions of human and technological development in a virtual community". Or: how we appropriate digital technology and its potential.
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The project is dedicated to the siege of Leningrad, a detailed reading of memoirs by the author and literary scholar Lidiia Ginzburg (1902-1990) who not only survived the siege but also attempted to understand the human condition of the siege theoretically, from the point of view of a writing subject. By positioning the writing subject in the centre of a cultural context evolving amidst mass extermination in wars, terror, and total mobilization, Ginzburg not only expressed the historical situation of the Soviet intelligentsia, but also suggested some keys to the interpretation of the 20t... (Read more)
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The project aims to update and critically (re-)assess the legacy of the semiotician and literary scholar Yuri Lotman in the context of the study of cognition. One of the most interesting and yet to be explored areas of Lotman’s multifaceted legacy was his study of culture as an intrinsic component of human consciousness. In his early structuralist as well as in his latest works on literature, art and culture, Lotman has consistently applied such concepts as (individual and collective) consciousness, memory, and intellect; modeling mechanism (that characterizes individual consciousn... (Read more)
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