LiU hub for apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic imaginaries

The LiU hub for apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic imaginaries is a meeting point for a seminar series and cross-disciplinary collaboration.

From its launch in 2024, the LiU hub for apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic imaginaries forms a cross-disciplinary meeting point for researchers at LiU who are interested in the ways in which the apocalyptic tradition echoes in contemporary politics, media, art, and everyday life. Well situated at the Division for History, Arts, and Religious Studies (HKR) at the Department of Culture and Society (IKOS), the hub draws on multiple relevant basic competences and knowledge areas, but we will also articulate the need for reaching out to other research within the humanities, the social sciences, and beyond.

Over the coming years, the hub will arrange open seminars and conferences both in Swedish and English that cover the theme area from different viewpoints. We welcome all LiU researchers that are interested in how apocalyptic imaginaries constitute parts of our current society, both in Sweden and internationally. Our activities will of course also be open for and invite researchers outside LiU.

About us

A part of a large research program

The LiU hub for apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic imaginaries is a part of the large research program At the end of the world: A transdisciplinary approach to the apocalyptic imaginary in the past and present, led by prof Jayne Svenungsson at Lund University and financed by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond 2023–2028.

The program interrogates the use of apocalyptic imagery in historiography, legal-political thought, and populist rhetoric, but also the deployment of apocalyptic tropes in debates about AI, climate change, and migration.

Drawing on multiple methodological skillsets from everything from biblical and religious studies to history, art and visual studies, law, political science and media and communication studies, At the end of the World taps into resources from the vast history of apocalyptic thinking and the biblical tradition to expose the deeply rooted, but largely unconscious ways in which apocalyptic imagery resurfaces in articulations of today’s cultural and political challenges.

A part of the European centre

Through the RJ program, the LiU hub is also connected to the leading European Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS) in Heidelberg, Germany.

More information

A Transdisciplinary Approach to the Apocalyptic Imaginary in the Past and Present

Researchers

Contact Allan Burnett if you have questions:

Allan Burnett

Postdoc

Marie Cronqvist

Professor

Anna Friberg

Associate Professor

Niclas Franzén

PhD student

Fredrik Gregorius

Senior Associate Professor

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.