Programme autumn 2025
If you wish a copy of a text or want to join a working seminar, contact Erik Berggren: erik.berggren@liu.se.
Dates, times, and topics for the autumn seminars will be published at the beginning of autumn.
September 24
Colonial Loopholes and Postcolonial Markets. Global Social Mobility for Sale
Manuela Boatca - Professor and Head of the School of the Global Studies Programme at the University of Freiburg, Germany, and Kerstin Hesselgren Visiting Professor at Södertörn University
By turning an inheritable status ascribed at birth into a commodity for sale on a global market, the “citizenship by investment” (CBI) industry targets wealthy investors from peripheral countries in search for economic opportunities and global mobility. The industry now facilitates the acquisition of passports from states that have launched CBI programs. The paper focuses on how five former British colonies in the Caribbean– Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts, and St. Lucia – have turned their continuing access to aspects of the legacy of colonial citizenships into bargaining currency in an unequal worldwide distribution of goods and rights, among which mobility rights necessary to legally migrate to better economic prospects rank very high.
Room: KO 301, Kopparhammaren 2, Campus Norrköping.
October 1
Professor Installment. Inaugural lecture Branka Likic-Brboric
At 15:15 to 17:00. The lecture will be followed by a reception. To attend, please fill in the registrationform by September 18.
Registration
October 2 (Thursday)
The Place of Culture in the Project of Digital Sovereignty in the EU
Kim West - Associate Professor, REMESO, Working seminar
Room: KM 53, Kåkenhus, Campus Norrköping.
October 8
Forced Migration from Afghanistan
Amin Mohseni - PhD student, REMESO, 20% Working Seminar.
Forced migration and the intersection of socio-legal aspects of migration and the legal status of immigrants in West Asia.
Room: KO 301, Kopparhammaren 2, Campus Norrköping.
October 15
The artistic and the essayistic
Kalle Brolin - Visiting artist at REMESO within the Knowledge Circulation project.
Kalle Brolin is a prolific artist, who has worked with a series of projects in different media, often addressing issues around work, migration and political resistance. Recently a two-year period working with the peace movement in Gotland resulted in the video essay Peace On Gotland, which is currently touring various exhibition sites. I am Scania, a ten-year project examining two industries in Skåne, the coal mines and the sugar factories, is wrapping up this fall, and has recently been exhibited at Malmö Konsthall. In the seminar he will show videos from some of his projects, while outlining his working methods and discussing the format of the video essay.
Room: KO 301, Kopparhammaren 2, Campus Norrköping.
October 22
Solidarity according to the principle of hope
Per Wirtén - Guest author at REMESO within the Knowledge Circulation Project.
In his latest book Hopp! Mot frihetens fiender Per Wirtén introduces what he calls the principle of hope. He is not interested in hope as optimistic well-being or a PR concept. Instead, he believes that the principle of hope has been a prerequisite for social reform and human emancipation throughout the modern era and is linked to the classic revolutionary slogan of freedom, equality and solidarity. In his presentation, he will emphasize the concept of solidarity and also welcomes a discussion about the relationship between scientific and literary writing.
Per Wirtén, is a journalist and author. He co-founded the magazine Arena. As a freelance writer, he comments on politics and culture in the Swedish press and has written a large number of books, reports and essays, often with a political theoretical and culturally critical perspective on Europe and the EU, migration, racism and 20th century history and its influential voices.
Room: TPM 51
November 6
Migration in an Era of Crises - REMESO organises a LiU 50 years conference
Keynote: Professor Bridget Anderson, University of Bristol.
More information can be found at the conference website
November 12
Laying Grounds for Dialogue: Exploring Anti-Racist Activists’ Negotiations of Emotions When Challenging Colour-blindness in Norway
Kine Marie Michelet - PhD Student, Oslo Metropolitan University, Dep. of Social Work, Child Welfare and Social Policy and Visiting PhD Cand., REMESO.
In her doctoral research, Kine explores the intersection of narratives, racialised emotions, and resistance. She engages with and theorises alongside anti-colonial and anti-racist communities in Norway, drawing on perspectives from Critical Race Theory, Whiteness Studies, feminist postcolonial theory, and affect theory.
Room: Tvärsnittet, Campus Norrköping.
November 19
Booklaunch: ”Forging History” (Historieförfalskarna)
Ola Larsmo - Writer, critic and former guest professor in the name of Moa Martinson.
Larsmo will present a new anthology, Historieförfalskarna, (”Forgers of History”), which he began during his time as LiU guest professor. The book discusses the falsification of history in right-wing alternative media.
Room: TP42, Täppan, Campus Norrköping.
November 26
Affective Assemblages of Kinship Single Mothers’ Labour Migration from a ‘Climate Hotspot’
Camelia Dewan - Assistant Professor, Dep. of Cultural Anthropology, Uppsala University
In coastal Bangladesh, a rapidly changing socioeconomic landscape has contributed towards the unkinning of returning sisters from failed marriages, shifting filial duties, and matrifocal living. Such ‘divorced’ women make new kin through unofficial romantic partners, with whom they may choose to migrate together as a means to exert emotional agency. Thinking through ‘affective assemblages of kinship’ via single mothers reveals the gendered complexities of rural labour migration and how it is contingent on social reproductive support.
The seminar is part of the course ”Class, Labour Migration and Globalization” in the Master´s Programme in Ethnic and Migration Studies at LiU. Room: KO 301, Kopparhammaren 2, Campus Norrköping.
December 3
Commerce, Conquest, and Colonialism – Rethinking (Racial) Capitalism
Gurminder Bhambra - Professor of Historical Sociology at the University of Sussex.
Modern capitalism tends to be regarded as a distinct and self-contained economic formation within modernity. The conceptual structure for its analysis is provided by Marx’s account of its emergence and, within mainstream sociology including Frankfurt School critical theory, this later comes to be re-interpreted through Weber. In contrast, as I have argued together with John Holmwood, we need to understand capitalism differently, that is, in terms of a political economy of colonialism. Further, we suggest that colonialism should not be considered a companion condition of the emergence of capitalism – that would simply replace ‘racial’ with ‘colonial’ without addressing the deeper problems identified. Instead, we propose that capitalism is best understood as a system produced by colonialism. This session will examine what is at stake in reconceptualising capitalism as colonial political economy.
Room TP53, Täppan, Campus Norrköping.
December 5
Måste vi prata om ras? Samtal om rasism som antirasistisk praktik i Sverige på 2010- och 2020-talen
Lisa Karlsson Blom - PhD defence
Discussant: Irene Molina, Professor at Department of Human Geography, Uppsala University.
Room: K3, Kåkenhus, Campus Norrköping.
December 18 (Thursday!)
Why Do We Need Palestine Studies in our Academia?
Professor Ilan Pappé - Fellow at Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter
Professor Pappé obtained his BA from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his D. Phil from the University of Oxford in 1984. He founded and directed the Academic Institute for Peace in Givat Haviva and was the Chair of the Emil Tuma Institute for Palestine Studies and Senior Lecturer at Haifa University, Israel. More recently, he has been the chair of the Department of History at the Cornwall Campus.
His research focuses on the Middle East and, in particular, the history of Israel and Palestine. He has also written numerous books and articles on multiculturalism, Critical Discourse Analysis, and on Power and Knowledge in general. For example, Ten Myths About Israel (2017), a modern classic, and he recently published Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic (2025).
Room: K2, Kåkenhus, Campus Norrköping.
