Presentation
I´m an associate Professor of History and a Senior Lecturer at Historical Studies. I lecture on Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Early Modern era. I´m also international coordinator for Cultural Heritage Studies, and lecture on topics concerning critical cultural heritage.
I have a Ph.d in History and I wrote my thesis on social networks, power structures and political culture among the nobility during the Middle Ages in Sweden. I also have done extensive research on aristocratic and royal ritual and published several edited volumes.
I do research in three different fields where I have different source material categories, methods, different theories and different chronological periods.
Museology and cultural heritage Here I do research on historical re-creation, transmission of cultural heritage and the construction of historical narratives and the use and abuse of history. I investigate how museums and heritage sites in Scandinavia and Great Britain construct and convey narratives. The main material is exhibitions and location information, but I also analyze the digital material connected to these. The theoretical starting point is critical cultural heritage studies and in the book I am writing I focus on national and transnational aspects of the view of the Viking Age in contemporary museums and on contemporary cultural heritage sites. The book is under contract to a publisher with the working title Constructing Viking History. Cultural Heritage and Norse Identity.
Gothicism, Old Norseism and Scandinavianism Here I am researching the 19th and 20th century craze for the past by examining actors and structures in Bohuslän and connecting these to the currents of ideas that prevailed during this time. How did these actors view nationalism and pan-nationalism. The idea of Scandinavia and the Nordics as a community permeated much of the thinking about the past, how was this expressed in a regional context? During the early 20th century, there are also more thoughts about race and supremacy, how is this linked to the Nordics? Emotionalism, Ideologies and identities are thus in focus where the construction of a regional past is in focus. My project has the working title Viken, the Viking and Vikarvet. A study of regional identities and yearning for the past in Bohuslän ca. 1840-1940.
Rituals and gender Finally, I am also continuing my research regarding the Middle Ages. The focus of the research is on the performativity of rituals and their role in the construction of power and ideals in the environment around the aristocratic courts and the royal courts in Scandinavia during the High Middle Ages. My research project has the working title: Power, Ritual and Gender. Performative rituals as constructed and constructing phenomena in Scandinavia ca. 1400-1550. Here I am interested in how rituals constructed the gender power order in the Swedish elite inspired by Judith Butler and Catherine Bell. Here I examine the aristocratic elite and start from theories of power around ruling couples; that men and women should be seen from the perspective that they have power that takes different forms. Rituals and symbolic components are in focus with a selection of aristocratic families of the high elite.