Arne Bugge Amundsen (Professor, University of Oslo) for THE EARLY MODERN PASTOR – Nordic Perspectives in August 2020 in Oslo.
The aim of the workshop is to establish an arena for Nordic comparison and co-operation in research. Behind the Norwegian research initiative are researchers from the Universities of Oslo, Tromsø and Aarhus. By applying for a workshop grant from ReNew our aim is to take the first step to establish a wider Nordic arena for this research. A Nordic comparison in this field has not been conducted earlier. We find it likely that there have been important historical differences not only within Denmark-Norway, including Iceland, but not least between Denmark-Norway and Sweden(-Finland). This comparison will be the main focus of the workshop. At the workshop, we will pursue new research ideas, including the possibility of a joint publication based on the papers presented, and discuss options for further applications for funding.
Kjell Lars Berge (Professor, University of Oslo) for Follow-up of first workshop financed by RENEW in the project "Exploring Nordic Education. Educational Reforms and Educational Media in the Nordic Countries from 1600 to present time" in Oslo in autumn 2019.
The first workshop held in February 2019 resulted in a publication plan presented in the attached document. The different projects/chapters and participants are presented in the document t. At the workshop will we discuss the chapters further aiming towards improvement of the the scientific quality of the contributions.
Kristian Bjørkdahl (Professor, University of Oslo) for Developing Institutional Infrastructure for Rhetorical Studies in the Nordic Countries, 7-8 May 2020 in Oslo.
With this application, we apply for workshop funding to develop and enhance an institutional infrastructure for rhetorical studies in the Nordic countries. While Nordic research into rhetoric is in many ways thriving, the field suffers from an acute lack of institutionalization. For example: The independent publisher that gives out Rhetorica Scandinavica is a one-man operation, the Nordic rhetoric conference is erected ad hoc, and there is a demonstrable lack of information flow between the relevant institutions. To aid the institutionalization process of this discipline across the Nordic countries, we apply for funding towards organizing a two-day workshop, with representatives from all or most Nordic universities where rhetorical studies can be found, to meet three concrete objectives: 1) Establish a Nordic association for rhetorical studies; 2) Develop a web portal to function as a hub for rhetorical studies in the Nordics; 3) Outline application(s) for funding of corpora of political rhetoric in the Scandinavian languages.
Giuliano D'Amico (Associate Professor, University of Oslo) for Esotericism and Aesthetics in the Nordic Countries (ESOSTETICS) in September 2020 in Oslo.
The workshop will last one and a half day and include three half days focused on different areas of study: 1) Esotericism in Nordic Media and Performance, 2) Esotericism in Nordic Literature, 3) Esotericism in Nordic Visual Arts. The workshop will be held by invited speakers, and will be open to students, scholars and the general public. In the evening, an open lecture and performance will be held, in order to maximize public outreach.
Dorina Damsa (PhD candidate, University of Oslo) for Nordic Borders - Early Career Researchers’ Workshop, 29-30 April 2020 in Oslo.
The workshop on ‘Nordic Borders’ aims to bring together early career researchers from Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and further afield, as well as leading scholars in the disciplines of Criminology, Law, and International Relations, to develop an understanding of ‘borders’ and ‘bordering’ practices in the Nordic region. ‘Borders’ and ‘bordering’ processes are understood here at different levels, from spatial to virtual, some at the edge of the state, other in state institutions and every day life. The themes of the workshops will be as follows: migration to the Nordic region; detention, imprisonment, and deportation from the Nordic region; border communities, spaces, and bodies; border technologies and the securitization of migration; and border research methodologies. The workshop will be organized at the University of Oslo (Dorina Damsa, Phd candidate) in collaboration with the University of Oxford (Maayan Ravid, Phd candidate). The workshop is intended for early career researchers under the mentorship of senior researchers in the field. There will be open lectures, accessible to the public, panel presentations, as well as focused group discussions. Participants will be invited to present papers, during the two day workshop, and collaboratively work on a volume on ‘Nordic Borders’, either as a special issue or edited volume, to be later presented to Oxford University Press. The workshop would be organized at the University of Oslo Faculty of Law, in April 2020, and it will be one event in a series of NORDEN events (UiO:Norden Public Debate at Littreraturhuset Oslo, Nordic Branding Workshop). he call for participants has been made through the Re:NEW Emerging Scholars network, Unge:Norden, NORDHOST, and Nordic Branding projects, and it will be further advertised at the participating universities and on the Re:NEW site.
Jari Eloranta (Professor, University of Helsinki) for Nordic Long-run Innovations in International Comparisons in 2020 in Helsinki.
We are hosting a small workshop, circa 25 scholars from different institutions and career stages, to discuss their research ideas about the study of innovations in the long run, especially in the Nordic historical contexts. We are featuring a smaller list of distinguished scholars as speakers to be funded (travel, accommodations, meals), and we will invite other scholars from Finland and abroad to attend at their own cost. This workshop will serve as the starting point of our project and an opportunity to solidify our research group. In addition, we hope to present some preliminary results from our data collection efforts, as well as research ideas built into our project, which we hope to get feedback on. The workshop will take place at the University of Helsinki some time in 2020. The University of Helsinki has ample experience in hosting such events and will assist in putting the workshop together (and provide some limited monetary support) The main organizer, Jari Eloranta, is also an experience conference organizer, with wide ranging international and domestic networks.
Eyvind Elstad (Professor, University of Oslo) for Education in the Nordic countries, 19-22 February, 2020 in Helsinki.
In this project we compare educational systems in Nordic countries and discuss opportunities for improvement. We supply critical, constructive perspectives on the Nordic education models’ sustainability and developmental potential—its strength, dilemmas, and challenges—with the aim of delivering better knowledge and deeper insight into the model from an academic perspective. We focus also on teacher education programmes. The knowledge from this project might reveal the development potential and future opportunities and its programmes and might be an important foundation for discussions on how education can be improved. These might be inputs for educational policies; thus, we later will invite policy makers from the Ministries of education in Nordic countries and other participant users from teacher education institutions. In the current phase of the project (2018-2020), we expand the project to a complete Nordic perspective by collecting empirical data in Denmark, Sweden and Iceland. We have now data from all Nordic countries, and we are just now analysing the statistical patterns of the samples. We will continue this endeavour at this workshop arrangement.
Jonas Felbo-Kolding (Post-doctoral researcher, Copenhagen Business School) for Hierarchies of labour market integration in the Nordic countries and across the EU in October 2019 at CBS.
The two-day workshop 'Hierarchies of labour market integration in the Nordic countries and across the EU' will bring together scholars from the Nordic countries and beyond to develop a special issue proposal most likely targeted at the Human Resource Management Journal.
Anne Hellum (Professor, University of Oslo) for Nordic Equality and Anti-discrimination Laws in the Throes of Change, August 2020 in Oslo/Reykjavik
Two days writing workshop for the authors and editors hosted by the Faculty of Law at the University of Iceland. The workshop is necessary to discuss draft articles and further develop the comparative framework for the five chapters that describe and analyze the equality and anti-discrimination laws and related laws in the five Nordic countries. One day open seminar at the Faculty of Law at the University of Iceland on Nordic equality and discrimination laws will be added to the workshop to disseminate information about the equality and anti-discrimination law in the five Nordic countries and invite to dialogue with researchers and students in law, gender studies and political science.
Janne Holmén (Lecturer, Södertörn University) for Reforms and Governance of Nordic Universities - Historical and Comparative Perspectives in December 2020 in Helsinki.
In the second half of the 20th century, higher education has expanded to the majority of populations in many industrialized nation, including the Nordic countries. Simultaneously, the university systems importance for economic development has become emphasized. As universities have evolved from small academic islands of minor economic significance into vast systems of higher education that are expected to be motors of growth, the incentives for the state to get more directly involved in university governance have increased. The ambition to democratise society has been another driving force behind government attempts to reform the system of higher education. However, the ideals of academic freedom and autonomy of universities are still alive, and in several Nordic countries they are enshrined in the constitution. These freedoms, often considered crucial for the academic goose’s long-term ability to keep laying golden eggs, might conflict with attempts at government control and with increasing numbers of external members in university boards. The workshop “Reforms and Governance of Nordic Universities – Historical and Comparative Perspectives” at Hanaholmen, Helsinki 2–3 December aims to investigate how university governance has evolved in the Nordic countries. The perspective will be both historical, tracking the developments that have led to the present situation, and comparative, analyzing national differences and similarities between the Nordic countries. The workshop will discuss how international trends in university governance, such as New Public Management, have affected the systems of higher education in the Nordic countries. Topics discussed include the relationships between external (government, business, labour unions) and internal (vice chancellors, faculty, students) actors in university governance, and the role of collegial decision making and top-down managerialism. The workshop will also address the relationship between constitutional and legal guarantees for academic freedom and the limitations exerted by different governance systems in this regard. At the workshop, papers will be presented by scholars from different disciplines with an experience of research in Nordic university history. The discussions of the papers are open to interested researchers. In association with the workshop, there will be an open lecture for the public on Nordic university governance and reforms of higher education.
Mads Jensen (Associate professor, Copenhagen Business School) for Coordinating Nordic Governments Successfully in Copenhagen in 2020.
There is a blind spot when it comes to the interaction between political and administrative coordination and its impact on government performance in the Nordic countries. Mapping this hinterland of overall politicoadministrative coordination is pertinent because it provides a potent explanation for the success (and failure) of government activities and, thus, the citizens’ trust in the political systems in the Nordic countries and beyond. This workshop seeks to measure and explain the variation in politico-administrative coordination across the Nordic countries and beyond, as well as assess the impact of such variation for government success. Three interlinked questions will guide the workshop addressed: How do the political and administrative parts of the Nordic executives coordinate, and how could types of politico-administrative coordination be distinguished and classified? How can we account for the cross-country variation in politico-administrative coordination? What is the impact of politico-administrative coordination on government success in Nordic countries?
Mathias Hein Jessen (Assistant professor, Copenhagen Business School) for Neoliberalism in the Nordics - developing an absent theme in December 2019 at CBS.
In recent years, the nature of neoliberalism as a concept, doctrine, -ism, set of bureaucratic practices, or specific political rationality and state-craft has been intensely debated, both in the academic, but also the public sphere. Especially since the onset of the Financial Crisis in 2007-8, a number of detailed theoretical and empirical works on neoliberalism and the rejections of neoliberalism as something unitary and inherently ‘bad’, and as a general moniker depicting the financialized capitalism that has been ascendant in the West since the 1970s, have been replaced by detailed and sophisticated analyses of how the processes of marketisation, privatisation and financialisation that the world has seen in the last three decades can be understood both as a general and universal phenomenon that has similarities in a wide range of settings (neoliberalism), but also and at the same time as highly specific, particularistic and contingent in different national settings, following specific national and cultural path dependencies (neoliberalisation). Even though the analyses of neoliberalism are manifold, and even though there in recent years, also especially since the Financial Crisis, has been an increased interest in Scandinavia, the Nordics and the ‘Nordic Model’ as an alternative form of governance to the market-based (neo)liberal modes, both in the Nordic countries themselves and internationally, the Nordics are conspicuously absent from most studies on neoliberalism However, there are good reasons to argue that the Nordic countries have been important laboratories for neoliberal reform, but that the trajectories of neoliberalism in the Northern European periphery were different from those of the Anglo-Saxon countries or continental Europe. Especially in the Nordic countries, Social Democratic Parties have been essential in driving neoliberalisation. This calls for an analysis of neoliberalism and neoliberalisation in Norden that both applies neoliberalism as a sophisticated analytical concept, but at the same time pays attention to the specific historical, cultural and political traditions that has shaped the specific neoliberalisation of both Norden in general, but also the specificities of each country. The workshop therefore seeks to develop a new research theme and a research network around neoliberalism and neoliberalisation in the Nordics.
Marianne Kartzow (Professor, University of Oslo) for Reimagining the Nordic Bible: Bible Reception in Contemporary Nordic Identity Formation Part 2, 27-28 August 2020 in Oslo.
The proposed workshop at Oslo University is to follow up the 2019 workshop in Aarhus, in which we started the project. In order to accomplish our goals, we consider this 2020 meeting imperative. We aim at developing a platform for new critical reflection on the use of the Bible in contemporary cultural and political debates in the Nordic countries. In Nordic societies, the Bible has traditionally been perceived as a basis of religion and social cohesion. Whereas such religious and Lutheran factors in the historical genesis of the Nordic welfare states are well-researched, the focus of the present workshop is on public use of the Bible in debates of today. The workshop consists of a series of case studies that discuss how Nordic bibles (translations, Children’s bibles, rewritings, reenactments in art and politics) and Nordic bible use (the Bible as argument and icon in the public sphere) legitimize and criticize common cultural codes and values of Nordic welfare societies (gender equality, individualism, national identities, religion as private phenomenon, division of religion and politics, secularized Protestant ideas, etc.). Moreover, a couple of presentations will deal with Bible reception in relation to the use of the Jewish Bible and the Quran in a Nordic context. Without essentializing the idea of a ‘Nordic Bible,’ it is the purpose to discuss common—and opposing—trends in biblical discourse across the Nordic countries. In Oslo, we will combine reworked drafts from the Aarhus workshop with new contributions, broaden out the perspective both by including new case studies and more conceptual reflections. We expect this model to bring a creative dynamics of both continuation and innovation.
Eirinn Larsen (Associate Professor, University of Oslo) for Branding the Nordics: Imagining the Future (Prod)using the Past in spring 2020 in Oslo.
The research group Modern History at the Department of Archeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, and Nordic Branding: Politics of Exceptionalism at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo, will host a publication-driven workshop on Branding the Nordics: Imagining the Future – (Prod)Using the Past. The workshop will be held in Oslo during the spring 2020, most truly in late May – early June. The aim is to present and discuss papers that will form a special issue of Scandinavian Journal of History (SJH) on the role and use of history in Nordic images and imaginings. The workshop will be by invitation only. The invitations have started to go out and we have received confirmation from participants on Session 7 at the Nordic Challenges Conference earlier this year. Additionally, new participants are being invited due to their expertise and relevance to the publishing plans presented and discussed at the workshop. However, the workshop will be open for those who want to participate, and will be announced through university channels and social media in the spring of 2020. The chief editors of SJH have expressed their support and interest in this plan (see communication attached). In addition, the workshop will be a venue for establishing new research partnerships among Nordic historians studying Nordic reputation in multiple ways and with points of departure in different historical contexts. The open event(s) invite stakeholders to take part of the discussion on how efforts to promote the Nordics over time have come to (prod)use new – and sometimes competing – pasts in accordance with changing Nordic contexts and challenges.
Hanne Pico Larsen (Assistant professor, Copenhagen Business School) for Heritage Branding between the Regional and the National in autumn 2019 at CBS.
In recent years we have observed a growing tendency among design and lifestyle companies in the Nordic countries to implement branding strategies at the intersection of nation branding, Nordic regional branding and heritage branding. A mix of nostalgic and strategic references to historical aesthetics, product lines, historic styles and designer names have been applied along with allusions to the legacies of individual design and lifestyle companies and as well as to societal contexts that have contributed to the shaping of twentieth-century Nordic design histories and perceptions of Nordic lifestyles. Cases in point include the branding of design businesses at all ends of the scale from high-end to low-cost from different Nordic countries including Georg Jensen Damask (DK), Carl Hansen (DK), Muuto (DK), IKEA (SE), Artek (FI) Iittala (FI), Muuto, Pur Norsk (NO), Røros (NO). The applicants for this grant represent an interdisciplinary group of experts in Nordic design history, business history, branding and cultural-legal studies. The grant will be used to finance a workshop to take place at CBS in the autumn of 2019. A list of scholars invited to the workshop is provided below. The workshop has three purposes: 1. To continue and consolidate the research network that was established at the conference ‘Nordic Aesthetics’ held December 2017 at Oslo University; 2. To exchange research ideas and projects that are linked to the theme of the workshop and through that; 3. To develop a steering committee working on a shared conceptual framework for addressing the intersection of heritage branding and nation branding, as it applies to contemporary Nordic design businesses, and to use this as leverage for the planning of a second workshop with the participation of representatives of the Nordic design and lifestyle industry within a research framework of business in society. In addition, the steering committee is intended to plan to a conference entitled ‘Heritage Branding between the Regional and the National: from Georg Jensen Damask to IKEA’, co-organized by the Universities of Oslo, Southern Denmark, Aarhus, Uppsala, Helsinki, Åbo, Copenhagen Business School and Kunstfack, to take place in 2020.
Kristina Malmio (Senior Lecturer, University of Helsinki) for Reimagining Politics and Culture in an Evolving World - Nordic perspectives on the 21st century, November 2020 in Helsinki
We think it is important to keep the workshop open and see what comes out of the discussions at the meeting in terms of common interest, perspectives or topics of study, or other forms of co-operation. However, we do have a preliminary idea of areas of interest for us; 1) Politics: We are witnessing various forms of politics within Nordic culture of today – depictions of activism, ecological awareness, politically engaged poetry, forms of criticism of society, ethical considerations as a form of resistance, post migration literature, and so on. The political dimension of culture arises from globalization and its developments, but has also its local Nordic dimensions. Many products of culture express a political will for change which is uttered for example through performative aspects and various forms of collectivism as a political idea as well as a poetic strategy (see Stenbäck 2015). This 21st century politics is rooted in the materiality of the world and is aware of the difficulties of resistance and ethics in a late-capitalist, post-political global world (Hjorth 2015). 2) The Planetary Turn – a growing awareness of a planetary dimension is expressed in Nordic culture, a turn that also involves the growing importance of the local. We have lately witnessed how also the studies of globalization have turned away from the globe, apprehended as a financial-technocratic system, toward the world ecology of our planet, building on a relationality model and a return to ethics (Elias and Moraru 2015). In this re-orientation, our planet becomes increasingly the conceptual and political dimension in which twenty-first century artists and writers picture themselves and their work.
Mads Mordhorst (Professor, Copenhagen Business School) and Lizaveta Dubinka-Hushcha (Assistant lecturer, Copenhagen Business School) for Identity politics in post-global Nordic societies in autumn 2019 at CBS.
The replacement of the globalization narrative with post-globalization narratives questions the historical interpretations and becomes a field of politics of memory, and national identity constructions, which is the focal point of the workshop. Where the above-mentioned narratives have been counter-narratives to the hegemonic narrative of globalization, we have in the latest years witnessed a fundamental change where the discourses of post- and anti-globalization have become dominant. Not at least Brexit and the election of D. Trump as the president of the US are expressions of tendency of a neo nationalist wave. This was made explicit by President Trump in his speech to the UN general assembly in 2018 “We reject the ideology of globalism and embrace the doctrine of patriotism.” In the wake of the election of Trump and Brexit, has F. Fukuyama in his newly published book ‘Identity’ (2018) to some extent renounced on his conclusion of the victory of the liberal democracy as the end of history. Instead he admits that he had overlooked the power and history of identity, dignity and memory. The hegemony of the narrative of globalization has however also been undermined from the awareness of the climate changes, or with the words of Bruno Latour: The project of globalization has come to an end, because the earth cannot sustain it” (Politiken 23/5-2018).
Ada Elisabeth Nissen (Post-doctoral researcher, University of Oslo) for ‘Nordic Nineties’: Cultural reorientation and identity formation in the Nordic region during the transformative 1990s autumn 2019 in Stockholm .
This is a two day workshop, which explores Nordic understandings of and reactions to the economic, political and cultural transformative processes of the 1990s. We depart from globalization and Europeanization, and analyzes how these processes impacted on an inevitable re-negotiation of Nordic national and regional identities. Based on a set of historical case studies, we investigate the interplay between a) Nordic key corporations and national public diplomacies in new overseas initiatives and b) the role and impact of large scale, mediatic mega events as moments of Europeanization or globalization in Norden. The aim is to work towards a special issue of Culture Unbound and eventually prepare an application for a larger research project on Nordic cultural reorientation and identity formation in historical perspective.
Lena Roos (Professor, Södertörn University) for Nordic Jews in the 20th and 21st centuries –Multiple Identifications in Everyday Life”, 18-19 May, 2020, Stockholm.
The workshop will stretch over two days (18-19 May, 2020). The workshop sessions will be planned thematically so that the first session is dedicated to introducing all the involved projects, their objectives and current state of research. Session 2–5 will pertain to one theme each and bring together one presenter from each project to benefit from the collaborative advantages offered by the joint Nordic workshop setting. Preliminary themes include e.g.: Research ethical issues; Mixed method: challenges and opportunities; Exploring the archives: best practices; Open Access publication of research results; Future joint projects on Nordic Jewry – funding opportunities. The workshop will also include a public lecture and a visit to the recently reopened Jewish museum in Stockholm.
Olaf Sigurjonsson (Associate professor, Copenhagen Business School) for Governance challenges and emergent solutions at the societal level enhancing trust and democracy in October 2019 at CBS.
The workshop investigates digitalization of corporate governance and its impact on accountability, transparency, efficiency and therefore trust within society, thus impacting democracy. Specific emphasis is on analyzing the Nordic model of corporate governance and how digital transformation will impact current notions of governance, business models and interaction between management and boards with shareholders (private) and other stakeholders (public entities). The aim with the workshop is to explore this emerging research topic and identify areas for further research and appropriate methodologies. Further, the aim to investigate how disruptive technologies are changing the current notion of governance and practiced. The discussion that will take place seeks to integrate governance issues at different levels by selecting examples of corporations from the Nordic countries of different governance traditions: foundations, state ownership, private ownership, and a few non-Nordic cases to be used as benchmarks. Thus, governance at the firm level will be discussed in relation to relevant governance at the societal level (macro-level), and to related governance issues at the micro-level.
May-Len Skilbrei (Professor, University of Oslo) for QUEEN Writing Workshop: producing, the last quarter of 2020 in Oslo.
The purpose of this workshop is pursue on-going cooperation in the context of a joint publication comparing Nordic policies on queer refugee and asylum. Forced transnational migration since 2015 has created a sense of urgency in generating new approaches to migration management that might address deficiencies in existing frameworks. One such deficiency has been the inconsistency in how Nordic countries have been dealing (or not dealing) with the issue of queer refugees and asylum seekers. Since the United Nations Refugee Agency published guidelines specifically dealing with refugee claims related to sexual orientation and gender identity, the topic has received some attention both in scholarly literature and in the formulation of national guidelines on immigration and asylum in some of the nations that make up the Nordic region. However, these national policies and guidelines remain inconsistent. The goal of this workshop is provide our intra-Nordic research network the space and a face-to-face interaction it needs to focus specifically on producing a comparative paper on the national guidelines and policies relating to queer refugees. The brunt of the writing process for the planned knowledge output will take place at a two-day workshop at the University of Oslo in the last quarter of 2020, and an article will be produced for peer-review in the first half of 2021. The workshop is by invitation only.
Johan Strang (Academy of Finland Research Fellow/Associate Professor, University of Helsinki) for Nordic Peace Revisited, March-April 2020 in Helsinki.
This workshop is co-organised by Christopher Browning (Warwick/Oslo) and Johan Strang (Helsinki/Oslo). It is the second of two workshops on the theme of ‘Nordic Peace Revisited’. It is by ‘invitation only’ as its function is to enable the contributors to an edited volume to present full drafts of chapters, gain final feedback, and enhance the book’s overall coherence. The workshop will take place over two days and will be organised around the book’s four thematic sections. The first section focuses on Norden as a ‘community of practices’ and considers the constitutive underpinnings of Nordic peace. This section is focused primarily on internal developments within the region, exploring the emergence and development of a sense of Nordic communality from historical and theoretical perspectives. The second section looks at ‘practices of Nordic peace export’ and considers how peace has been reconfigured and translated into various policies for export and where a generalised movement from peacekeeping operations to humanitarian aid to peace and conflict resolution can be identified. Section three then considers how ideas of Nordic peace have been ‘received and resonated’ within the region and beyond. This shifts the focus explicitly to questions of identity, status and branding and the extent to which commitments to Nordic peace have gained ontological significance. Finally, section four focuses on ‘contestations of Nordic peace’. This entails reflecting on the longer history of Nordic peace and its centrality to notions of Nordic communality and identity. In this respect, chapters in this section consider the implications of contemporary social and political upheavals within the region and of changes in Norden’s broader geopolitical environment, to consider the extent to which these offer possibilities for rejuvenating ideas of Nordic peace, but where in doing so its underpinning constitutive dynamics may be in a process of transformation.
Ylva Waldermarson (Director, Södertörn University) 42 000 NOK for Nordic Democracy: Challenges, Threats and Possibilities in October 2019 at the Södertörn University .
The Nordic countries have been depicted as representing a special mode of democracy, a ”consensual democracy”, enabling compromises between works and capital as well as universal characterized welfare systems, a societal political solution - “the Nordic model” – long regarded as a role model of democracy, by the Nordics as well as by other parts of the world. Since the late 1970s the characteristics that constituted this model have changed. From the late 1980s change has accelerated, partly because of internal Nordic political and economic change – liberalisation, privatisation and individualisation, partly by general tendencies as medialization, globalization and digitalisation. Today the region is confronted by several democratic challenges, including isolationist and populist backlash, rising inequality, widening gaps between citizens and politicians, and growing distrust – a development taking place in new geopolitical context challenging the security politics drawn up on the premises of the “window of opportunity” opening up due to the collapse of the Soviet union and independence of the Baltic States. How do the Nordic countries and Nordic politics – within different policy fields and different political arenas - respond to these changes? How do they affect the Nordic model? Which future roles are designated the Nordic countries, region and model in the present rhetoric and discourse? Which players claim to own the political solutions of future democracy? Which modes of democracy are advocated ? Which arenas are brought out as central - civic society, local society, national parliamentarianism, Nordic political bodies for transnational co-operation, the EU, the UN? The short-time aim of this workshop is to 1) identify research frontiers, 2) establish a research platform and 3) identify – and perform – Nordic joint research projects or programs, which is the long term aim of the project. Projects, including the assumptions presented above, based on comparisons between the Nordic countries are seen as a fruitful way to study if we at present are witnessing a radical change or even a break up, of the Nordic model and Nordic co-operation or if this model and co-operation is going to be strengthened due to new international and geopolitical challenges
Ylva Waldemarson (Professor, Södertörn University) for Climate Strike! Climate Change and the Challenges to Nordic Democracy in the 2010s, 9-10 January 2020 in Södertörn.
The short-term aim of this workshop is to shed light on the impact of climate change and climate action as a profoundly political issue, not only across the Nordic countries, but also within wider eco-human system of the Baltic Sea Region: How does it challenge democratic politics, policy making and party systems and in which ways does it activate tensions within hegemonic narratives, organized interests and scientific expertise and their shifting relations to policymaking
processes? In what ways does it relate to traditional as well as new social movements? Finally, how does it influence intra-Nordic cooperation and (inter)national branding of the Nordic region, internally as well as externally – not the least in the Baltic Sea Region, where the Nordic model has been prominently launched as an example of democratic governance, but is also challenged today? By operationalizing these research questions into concrete work packages,
infrastructural collaborations, and delivery/dissemination strategies, the workshop is intended to contribute to the long-term aim of the project which is to launch a multi-disciplinary and trans-Nordic research program on climate change and
Nordic democracy to be submitted to supranational institutions (e.g. ERC, Nordforsk, etcetera) and in sub-applications, addressed to national foundations (Academy of Finland, Baltic Sea Foundation, Danish Research Council, Norwegian
Research Council, Swedish Research Council, Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, etcetera).