2022

Oscar von Seth - litteraturvetenskap

Disputerar 13 maj
Avhandling: "Outsiders and Others: Queer Friendships in Novels by Hermann Hesse". Länk till annan webbplats.

Sammanfattning/Summery:

Friendship between men is a key theme in the novels by Hermann Hesse, one of the most widely read German-language authors of the twentieth century and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946. Hesse’s protagonists are usually depicted as outsiders who come to know themselves in an intimate bond with another man. The friend is almost always portrayed as rebellious, beautiful, enigmatic, and inspiring, and comes to play a key role in the protagonist’s personal development and journey through life. Outsiders and Others draws on queer theories and queer concepts to explore how characters in Hesse’s fiction intersect with and connote queerness — such as homoeroticism and nonconformism — and argues that the friendships at the center of Hesse’s stories are queer friendships that challenge heteronormative conceptions of relationality, sexuality, and desire. With readings of the novels Peter Camenzind (1904) and Der Steppenwolf (1927), this thesis demonstrates that queerness is an essential element in Hesse’s frequent depictions of friendship.

Jenny Gustafssons - idéhistoria

Disputerar 20 maj
Avhandling: "Drömmen om en gränslös fred. Världsmedborgarrörelsens reaktopi, 1949-1968" Länk till annan webbplats.

Sammanfattning/Summery

In postwar France, a new movement – Citoyens du Monde – emerged with the aim to unite people across the world around the political target of achieving world peace through dissolving the national borders and establishing a worldwide society. In 1949, Världsmedborgarrörelsen (the World Citizen Movement) was established in Sweden as the 21st branch of the movement and represented the new ism mondialism.

The aim of the study is to understand and explain the ideas that propelled Världsmedborgarrörelsen, and how these ideas emerged, evolved and faded away in relation to the prevailing political circumstances. Theoretically, the dissertation draws on formation of -isms and approaches to political temporality. The study is supported by Hannah Arendt’s posited gap in time between memory and expectation as a crucial precondition for political actors as they temporally orient themselves to establish new policies – and argues that the temporal orientation of world citizens was based on a gap in time filled by the idea that World War II had demonstrated the failure of traditional politics. Furthermore, the would-be citizens of the world forged their political expectations through a ”reactopia”; they presented a utopian political dream to ward off an imagined dystopia of nuclear war. Having experienced World War II and now living under the very real threat of nuclear weapons, Världsmedborgarrörelsen proclaimed that nation states, with their intergovernmental strife and division of people, were paving the way to new wars. By the time Världsmedborgarrörelsen dissolved in the 1960s, it appeared to be a prisoner of its own reactopian temporal orientation. Memories of World War II had faded and the threat of nuclear war diminished. As the new political boundary was drawn between Global North and Global South, the movement found it difficult to mobilise its forces.

Kristin Halverson - idéhistoria

Disputerar 1 juni
Avhandling: Tools of the Trade - Medical Devices and Practice in Sweden and Denmark, 1855-1897 Länk till annan webbplats.

Abstract:

Nineteenth-century medicine is characterised by rapid technological change, new methods of diagnostics and treatments of disease, far-reaching developments in medical science, and professionalisation. This has led to great interest in the period and a large body of scholarly and popular research. However, much of this scholarship studies British, German and French contexts. There is a pressing need to study how knowledge and practice were transferred between regions and how medical technologies were adapted locally.

In this study, I examine changes in medical practice in Sweden and Denmark by centring medical devices, as they were described and discussed in Swedish and Danish medical journals between 1855 and 1897. This is done by exploring the relationships between device, practice, and knowledge in four technological areas and how their use was explained in these journals. The four technological areas are lensed and mirrored instruments for examining the nose, throat, and eyes; orthopaedic treatment; antisepsis according to Joseph Lister; and asepsis. All four areas are well-researched internationally but entail a number of local particularities. These are significant in understanding local circumstances involved in their practical adoption.

The analysis of these areas illustrates that, despite the international exchange of medical knowledge, knowledge was not always translated into practice seamlessly, in particular when involving the use of devices. Because of this, many of the articles exploring these technologies were instructional and attuned to local conditions. Practice unfolded in different ways, accounting for local circumstances. This thesis highlights the importance of examining the proliferation of nineteenth-century medical technologies on the local level and in practice, in order to better understand the practical predicaments involved in their use.

Henrik Ohlssons - religion

Disputerar 3 juni
Avhandling: Facing Nature: Cultivating Experience in the Nature Connection Movement. Länk till annan webbplats.

Sammanfattning/Summery:

Through field research in Sweden and Finland between 2017 and 2022, the thesis follows a burgeoning social movement in which connection with nature is seen as a means of both personal wellbeing and ecological sustainability at the societal level. The thesis describes and analyses ideas, practices, organisations, and literature in a contemporary cultural context in the borderland between health practice, environmental activism, and spirituality. It also examines participants' personal experiences and understands both the practice and its social milieu as a cultivation of experience, whereby experiences of nature as alive and communicative are maintained and enhanced. This leads into a discussion of animism in a contemporary Western context, where the thesis aims to develop a multidimensional understanding which takes into account not only ontology and cognitive-perceptual patterns, but also lays emphasis on emotional and ethical dimensions. The thesis employs the concept face, which, in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, signifies the encounter with subjectivity outside of oneself. In contrast to objects, which can be grasped intellectually and thus controlled and incorporated, the face reveals a reality beyond conceptualisation to which one must relate ethically. The thesis arrives at an understanding of both health and spirituality as states of (relative) openness toward the world and its human and non-human inhabitants.

Simon Magnusson - utbildningsvetenskapliga studier
Disputerar: 7 oktober
Avhandling: Boosting young citizens’ deontic status - Interactional allocation of rights-to-decide in participatory democracy meetings Länk till annan webbplats.

This thesis explores the social organization of rights-to-decide in participatory democracy meetings where adolescents are invited. In such meetings, young citizens are given the opportunity to influence decision-makers and participate in determining future political action. Specifically, this thesis focuses on how social inclusion in decision-making is accomplished in adolescent-politician interaction as well as youth-peer interaction.

Mats Dahllöv - estetik
Disputerar 21 oktober 2022
Avhandling: Det absolut och det gemensamma. Benjamin Höijers konstfilosofi Länk till annan webbplats.

Denna avhandling utgör den första tolkningen av Benjamin Höijers konstfilosofi. Höijer (1767–1812) var en svensk del av den tyska idealismen och anses vara en av de briljantaste tänkarna i svensk filosofihistoria, men han har till stor del varit outforskad. Hans skrifter rymmer likväl en av filosofihistoriens första systematiska konstfilosofier. I fokus står temana metafysik och politik och avhandlingen strävar efter att utforska Höijers spekulativa nyckelbegrepp det absoluta. Metoden är tvåfaldig: en hermeneutisk som handlar om en noggrann läsning av Höijers texter liksom en kontextualisering av hans tänkande i hans politiska samtid, och en mer produktiv metod som syftar till att aktivera begrepp och teman hos Höijer. Studien betonar kopplingen mellan hans begrepp om det absoluta och dess förmodade motsatser: relativitet, mångfald, förändring, sinnlighet och det gemensamma – avhandlingens andra huvudbegrepp.

Marie Jonsson - idéhistoria

Disputerar 28 oktober
Avhandling: Vad vilja vegetarianerna?: En undersökning av den svenska vegetarismen 1900–193 Länk till annan webbplats.

Throughout human history, some people have chosen to abstain from eating meat – for ethical or religious reasons. But beginning in the mid-19th cen­tury, groups and organizations were formed in the West who identified themselves as “vegetarian”. With the establishment of Svenska Vegetariska Föreningen (SVF, or the Swedish Vege­tarian Society) in 1903, Sweden became part of this international movement.

A central claim in this study is that the formation of vegetarian practices in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century should be understood as an expression of the emerging modern society. The purpose of this study, covering 1900–1935, is to contribute new perspectives and insights concerning vegetarianism in Sweden in the early 20th century. On the one hand, this study examines Swedish vegetarianism as a movement. On the other, attention is drawn to how closely connected it was to vegetarian movements on an inter­national level.

Sophie Landwehr Sydow - medieteknik

Avhandling: Makers, Materials and Machines - Understanding Experience and Situated Embodied Practice in the Makerspace Länk till annan webbplats.

This thesis explores interaction between humans, materials, and machines, in the context of makerspaces. The concept of making describes a practice that deals with new technologies in combination with craft to create artifacts in physical, digital and hybrid forms. Despite substantial research, there is still a need to examine what practices of making have to offer to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research. This particularly concerns investigations of the close relations between the multitudes of different activities, materials, machines and things in such shared spaces.

Anton Poikolainen Rosén - medieteknik

Disputerar 30 september
Avhandling: Noticing nature. exploring more-than-human-centred design in urban farming Länk till annan webbplats.

This thesis articulates, theorises and furthers the concept of “more-than-human-centred design” by studying the use and design of technology for noticing nature and caring for nature. The emerging field of more-than-human-centred design focuses on the mutual interdependence between humans and non-humans (e.g. organisms such as animals, plants and microbes, as well as autonomous technologies). It is a step away from seeing other organisms as inferior to humans or valuable only as resources. This implies that design research frameworks and methods need to be remade. How can we design for and with other organisms? What needs to be accommodated in a paradigm that allows for more-than-human-centred design? What are concrete design examples and implications of this kind of thinking? In short, there is a need to investigate what it means to design for more-than-human worlds.