Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe

Professor

I am a Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History. My research explores art and visual culture through feminist, transnational, and critically historiographical perspectives.

Modern and Contemporary Art and Visual Culture

I am interested in issues of power, meaning production, and historiography in relation to modern and contemporary art and visual culture.

Among other things, my work has addressed public art and cultural policy in the welfare state, feminist strategies within the art museum, representations of the body and gender in painting, sculpture, and photography, as well as artistic mobility and cultural transfer.

Since 2026, I am full professor of modern and contemporary art history at the Department of Culture and Society (IKOS) at Linköping University. My work is based at the Division for History, Arts, and Religious Studies (HKR). My professorship is funded by the Catharina Högbom and Michael Cocozza Foundation.

I received my PhD from Uppsala University in 2007 with a thesis entitled Sculpture in the Welfare State. Before joining Linköping University, I was Professor of Art History at Stockholm University, where my roles included Director of Graduate Studies in Art History (2015–17) and Coordinator of Research in Art History (2021–25).

More about me

Missions

Ordinary representative for Sweden in the Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art (CIHA).

Networks

Since 2021, I have been a member of the interdisciplinary network Transitive Modernities and have contributed to its educational and research activities in France, Greece, and Sweden.

Academic background

For further information about my research activities up to 2026, please see my profile page on the Stockholm University website.

Publications

My publications in Diva.

Research

Swedish Artists on the Move: Transnational Mobility and Artistic Practices 1900-1940

This project examines the international mobility of Swedish artists in the early twentieth century, situating Swedish modern art within a transnational framework and analysing the meanings and politics of artistic mobility.

The aim is to provide a more nuanced perspective on the Paris-centric narrative of canonical art history by highlighting the broader transnational trajectories that shaped Swedish modernism. The project will result in a monograph—the first thematic study of mobility and transnationalism in Swedish modern art. The publication explores travel to German-speaking Europe in the early 1900s; wartime isolation and the ‘provincial turn’ of the 1910s; transregional Scandinavian collaborations in Paris; increased travel to Italy in the 1920s in relation to both aesthetic discourse and art market mechanisms; as well as mobility in the French-controlled Maghrib, shaped by sociocultural and geopolitical power relations.

The monograph offers an original contribution by linking the mobility of Swedish artists to wider transnational art histories, uncovering overlooked trajectories and cultural encounters. Informed by transdisciplinary research on mobility, cultural transfer, and transnational historiography, the project seeks to advance methodological renewal within art history. It challenges methodological nationalism, applies mobility and transfer theories to artistic practice, and engages in current debates on global art history.

The monograph synthesises previously conducted research within the framework of a three-year project funded by the Swedish Research Council. The project is funded by a Sabbatical grant from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

En målning av en by med träd och berg i bakgrunden.

Swedish Artists on the Move

Mobility transnationalism and artistic practices in the early 20th century. Project site at Stockholm University.

European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies

EAM is an international research network devoted to the study of the avant-garde and modernism from a global perspective, with a focus on the period from the late nineteenth century to the twnety-first century.

The network promotes interdisciplinary and intermedial research on experimental aesthetic practices, seeks to foster an interest in the cultural dimensions and contexts of the avant-gardet and modernism. EAM organises biennual conferences and publishes anthologies in the book series European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, which is published by the renowned publisher Gruyter Brill.

In 2025–26, I serve, together with Andrea Kollnitz (Stockholm University), as Chair of the European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies (EAM), and I am organising the network’s tenth interdisciplinary conference on the theme Avant-Garde and Migration.

List over the Networks Chairs and the Steering Committee

Network chairs, 2025–26:

Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe, Linköping University

Andrea Kollnitz, Stockholms University

Steering Committee

David Ayers, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

Jan Baetens, KU Leuven, Belgium

Moritz Bassler, Universität Münster, Germany

Sascha Bru, KU Leuven, Belgium

Elena Hamalidi, Ionian University, Corfu, Greece

Marja Härmänmaa, University of Helsinki, Finland

Benedikt Hjartarson, University of Iceland, Iceland

Agata Jakubowska, University of Warsaw, Poland

Andrew McNamara, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

Jean-Pierre Montier, Université Rennes 2, France

Tania Ørum, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Camilla Paldam, Aarhus University, Denmark

Ann Stephen, University of Sydney, Australia

Harri Veivo, Université de Caen Normandie, France

Rea Walldén, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece

EAM

An international research network devoted to the study of the avant-garde and modernism from a global perspective, with a focus on the period from the late nineteenth century to the twnety-first century.

The Historical Studies Research Environment

How have people thought, felt, and acted throughout history? How have thoughts turned into actions, texts, and images, and how are these understood and used today? Our research focuses on humans as meaning-makers from a historical perspective.

Organisation

Division of History, Arts and Religious Studies (HKR)

We focus on how people think and act, how these thoughts are conveyed in texts, images, and artefacts in the past and the present, how they are understood and used, and how they are expressed in human actions, cultures, and politics.

Department of Culture and Society (IKOS)

At the Department of Culture and Society (IKOS), social sciences and the humanities gather in environments where research and education work together.

Groups of students at tables in Studenthuset

Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FILFAK)

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences provides education and research in humanities, social- and behavioral sciences, commercial law, art disciplines and thematic science.