The Joint Faculties of Humanities and Theology are launching a new platform to highlight research relevant to war and conflict. This initiative aims to strengthen the position of humanities and theology in issues related to defence, war, and conflict. This is necessary in order to achieve fair and adequate representation in various contexts, both at university level as well as nationally and internationally. While languages are also central to this initiative, their importance is so self-evident that it need not be explicitly stated at this stage..
The most important way to position the humanities and theology is by participating in and being visible in existing contexts. This includes designing new educational programmes, producing high-quality publications, contributing to expert committees and think tanks nationally and internationally, and engaging in the forthcoming LU Centre for Preparedness and Resilience (LUPREP). Additionally, the HT faculties must build their own structure to refer to and lean on in contacts with funding bodies, academic institutions, authorities, and other stakeholders.
To take a step forward in this important work, we are now launching Lund Humanities in War and Conflict (provisional name) as a platform and project to be developed during 2025.
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Core members
Torbjörn Ahlström:
Torbjörn Ahlström is a Professor of Historical Osteology at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History. His research focus on diverse aspects of past societies based on human skeletal tissues, recently DNA to identify infections. He has also studied interpersonal violence, trauma and warfare among hunter-gatherers and early farmers on the Scandinavian Peninsula (c. 10000 to 2000 BCE). Presently project leader for the Uppåkra excavations.
Elzbieta Drazkiewicz:
Ela Drazkiewicz specialises in political anthropology. She is leading the ERC CONSPIRATIONS project analysing conflicts over conspiracy theories in Europe, as well as the Nordforsk NORDREN project examining the preparedness of the Nordic societies to disinformation threats. Drazkiewicz has an experience of working in humanitarian and development aid sector. She is the author of ‘Institutionalised Dreams: The Art of Managing Foreign Aid’ (Berghahn).
Lisa Engström:
Lisa Engström is a senior lecturer at the Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund University. She is leading the collaborative research initiative “Crisis and War Preparedness for Everyone? – Libraries as Arenas for Conversation Circles on Preparedness”, which aims to identify the challenges individuals with different abilities face in actively participating in preparedness work. She is also a member of the network NORDREN, investigating disinformation.
https://www.kultur.lu.se/person/LisaEngstrom/
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0138-2050
Mikael Fauvelle:
Mikael Fauvelle is an Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Lund University. His research is focused on understanding ancient economic systems. He has studied how complex political and economic networks responded to stress from both internal and external factors in multiple world regions and time periods.
https://portal.research.lu.se/sv/persons/mikael-fauvelle
Elsa Hedling:
Elsa Hedling is an Associate Professor (Docent) and an Associate Senior Lecturer in European Studies at the Centre for Languages and Literature. Her research focuses on the intersection of digitalization and international politics, particularly in the context of European Union foreign and security policy coordination, communication and diplomatic practice. This intersection currently highlights areas such as the international communication of rearmament, deterrence strategies and hybrid threats.
Björn Lundberg:
Björn Lundberg is Associate Professor (Docent) of History, specializing in childhood and youth, education, and the history of knowledge. His current research examines civil defense and preparedness education during the Cold War. His research also explores the use of historical narratives and imagery in contemporary preparedness education.
Tornike Metreveli:
Tornike Metreveli is an Associate Senior Lecturer in European Studies and an Associate Professor (Docent) in Sociology of Religions. He is working on how Orthodox churches engage in international relations and geopolitics, particularly in the religious dimensions of the Russia-Ukraine war, interconfessional relations in Ukraine, and the role of religion in disinformation/misinformation in Orthodox Christian diaspora.
Erik Sidenvall:
Erik Sidenvall is Professor of Practical Theology at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies. His research is currently centered on material and spatial expressions of religion and spirituality focusing on the existential dimensions of civil contingencies. He has also investigated the formation of low-level networks during the Cold War and is a founding member of the ReCoNet research initiative.
Annika Wallin:
Annika Wallin is associate professor in cognitive science with a special interest in judgment and decision making. Her research centers on how information (and uncertainty) is acquired, processed, and communicated in complex decisions and how this can be improved. Among others she collaborates with the Migration Agency and the Armed Forces.
Olof Sundin:
Olof Sundin is a Professor of Information Studies. His research focuses on the configurations, control mechanisms and social impacts of digital information, with a special interest in threats of disinformation. He has studied search engines and their role in everyday life, media and information literacy as forms of infrastructural meaning-making, and concequences of an increasingly AI-infused information infrastructure for expertise, evidence and trust.
Johan Östling:
Johan Östling is Professor of History, Director of the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge (LUCK) and Wallenberg Academy Fellow, Lund University. His research is devoted to the history of knowledge, but he has also a general interest in the history of modern and contemporary Europe. He is currently the PI of a comparative project about the Europeanisation of the universities.
More information: https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/johan-östling
Affiliated/coordinating
David Gisselsson Nord
Magnus Christiansson
Sara Håkansson (coordinating)
Johannes Persson (coordinating)
Paul Schrotti
Med önskan om en fin Påsk.
Johannes