Inaugural lectures at the Department of Culture and Society

Josefina Syssner, Professor of Cultural Geography
January 27, 2023

How can a geographer's knowledge be useful for sparsely populated areas? In her installation lecture, Josefina Syssner talked about geographers' knowledge, with a particular focus on her own field of research: peripheral, sparsely populated areas.

Gissur Ó Erlingsson, Professor of Political Science
April 19, 2022

What different reform alternatives concerning local government organisation are there? What are their advantages and disadvantages? In his inaugural lecture, Gissur Ó Erlingsson addressed these questions.

Per-Anders Forstorp, Professor of Culture and Media
April 6, 2022

How can we understand ignorance? How can perspectives taken from research on culture and communication contribute to an understanding of ignorance? Those questions were approached by Per-Anders Forstorp in his inaugural lecture.

Claudia Tazreiter, professor of ethnic and migration studies
November 24, 2021

What can we learn from situating migration not as exception, or problem, as so often happens, particularly when questions of nation, resources, cultural values and contested histories and memories are at play?

In this lecture migration is explored as complex phenomena with implications and possibilities for new social formations beyond the common understanding of migration as the crossing of the territorial border of a state. New bordering practices are manifest as technologized borders, virtual borders, as well as imagined, or psychological borders. In her inaugural lecture, Claudia Tazreiter explored these new practices and the values that drive them, reflecting on epistemic and methodological challenges and their relation to broader implications for social life and social change.

Bodil Axelsson, professor of cultural heritage
November 10, 2021

Museums have been addressing digitalisation for decades. Collections are converted to digital format, operations are presented on webpages, digital screens are displayed in exhibitions, visitors are addressed through digital media, and questions are asked about how digital cultures should be saved. In her inaugural lecture, Bodil Axelsson discussed how digitalisation of museums can be understood in relation to the central question of critical cultural heritage research: through which processes are selected pasts preserved and communicated to future generations? 

Harald Wiltsche, professor of philosophy
October 27, 2021

As the world reels around the COVID-19 crisis and the challenges posed by climate change, there is an alarming realization that a significant fraction of the general public openly distrusts science and its findings.

The situation is paradoxical: Although it is rather clear that science and technology are humanity’s best bet to master the existential threats we are currently facing, public belief in the authority of science is waning. Instead of discussing the complex socio-economical mechanisms that are behind this worrying development, Harald Wiltsche advanced the thesis that the critical state of scientific culture is in part self-imposed and has to do with the still unresolved tensions between lifeworld and science.