Johan Strang has been appointed Associate Professor in Nordic Studies at CENS, starting in December 2018. Johan has a long history at CENS having been engaged as a research assistant already as a MA-student in the early 2000s. In 2015-17 he was the acting University Lecturer in Nordic Studies. Strang has also spent periods in Bergen (2007-10), Södertörn (2015) and Oslo (2018) where was engaged as a strategic advisor for the UiO:Nordic programme. During 2011-12 he worked at CENS preparing a report on Nordic cooperation commissioned by the Nordic Council and he continues to be a central voice in matters related to the public debate on Norden. His research deals with Nordic cooperation and Nordic political and intellectual history. Most recently he has edited a special issue on Nordic human rights history in the Nordic Journal for Human Rights 2018:3.
Frederik Forrai Ørskov has started in August 2018 as doctoral candidate at CENS. He is a trained historian from the University of Southern Denmark (with a minor in Creative Writing) and Central European University, where his MA-thesis dealt with Danish promotional efforts in Nazi Germany. At CENS, he is studying various conceptualizations of Norden outside of Scandinavia in the first half of the twentieth century, focusing on alternative perceptions of the Nordic region to the social democratic vision that would later become more or less hegemonic.
Heidi Haggrén started as a coordinator at the Centre for Nordic Studies in June 2018 as a part of the ReNEW Helsinki team and with the responsibility for coordination of ReNEW. She has a long experience in coordinating Nordic projects in and outside of the academia. Heidi is also a doctoral candidate at the University Helsinki and she has published on Nordic cooperation, labour market relations and nursing history. Her doctoral project analyses nurses’ collective interest organization in the post-World War II Finland focusing on the tensions between social loyalties related to the content and organization of nurses' work.