Nordic Research Network 3rd Annual Conference 2013
The conference organisers invite participants to the Nordic Research Network 2013, hosted by UCL’s Department of Scandinavian Studies. This two-day interdisciplinary conference on 5-6 September 2013 will bring together UK-based postgraduate students and early-career researchers currently working on topics relating to the Nordic area.
We are now inviting proposals from UK-based postgraduate students and early-career researchers (with three years or less of postdoctoral experience) for brief presentations (≤ 20 mins) discussing their current research aims or findings. Participation is not limited to those working within departments of Scandinavian Studies, and proposals are welcome on Nordic research in all areas of the humanities and social sciences.
We highly encourage alternative and interactive presentation formats beyond the traditional paper presentation. Examples include presentations given inPecha Kucha format, video, group panel discussion, roundtable, etc. Presentations will be followed by discussion and feedback in a supportive atmosphere.
If you wish to present at this conference, please send a title, abstract(≤ 200 words) and a short biographical note including your institutional affiliation (≤ 50 words) to nordicresearchnetwork@gmail.comby 17 May 2013, 6pm. These will be reviewed by the conference committee, and you will be notified of the outcome shortly thereafter.
Do note also that there is an opportunity for conference papers to be published in book form.
Organising Committee
Agnes Broome ● Pei-Sze Chow ● Thomas Hoctor ● Nichola Smalley ● Louisa Taylor ● Essi Viitanen
A call for papers has just been sent out for the Sculptural Mobilities symposium for those of you out there with an interest in Nordic sculpture.
Call for Papers
Sculptural Mobilities:
Tracing the flows of sculptural
artworks between the Nordic Countries and Europe from the early modern period
to the present day
12th June 2013, University
College London, Bloomsbury, London
“Sculptural Mobilities: tracing the flows of
sculptural artworks between the Nordic Countries and Europe from the early
modern period to the present day,” is a one-day symposium organised
collaboratively by University College London’s Department of Scandinavian
Studies, and Kingston University’s Visual and Material Culture Research Centre.
The interdisciplinary symposium will investigate
the cultural mobility of sculptural artworks. Positioning the Nordic Countries
as a contact zone of sculptural exchange, the project will trace the flows of
artworks to and from the Nordic Countries and Europe and examine the impacts
these flows generate on both local/regional contexts of display and the nature
of the sculptural artwork itself. Histories of sculpture within the Nordic
region are arguably under-studied and the region’s influence upon and
translation of influences from the wider Europe remain insufficiently traced.
Our symposium will seek to emphasise the Nordic Countries’ important role as an
interstice between the East, West and the North, and to bring to light
individual histories of sculptural mobility from the early modern period
onwards. We welcome papers uncovering new histories of sculptural mobility and
those focused on examples of contemporary practice, which continue the exchange
of sculptural artworks and artists between the Nordic Countries and Europe
today.
Stephen Greenblatt has defined cultural mobility as
“the restless process through which texts, images, artefacts, and ideas are
moved, disguised, translated, transformed, adapted, and reimagined in the
ceaseless, resourceful work of culture.” The sculptural artwork by contrast is
often imagined as static and fixed, stable and immutable. To what extent is the
sculptural artwork changed by transcultural recontextualisation? What is the
potential for movement to compel a performative response within the moving
object itself – what are the ways in which it is materially made to move via
this process of transcultural exchange? Conversely, how do sculptures impact
their new contexts of display? To what extent do moving sculptures confirm or
critique the complexity, interdependence and instability of „localised?
cultures?
We are interested in examining the movements of
specific sculptural artworks between the Nordic Countries and Europe from a
range of interdisciplinary perspectives, encompassing the history of art and
aesthetics, reception, geography, anthropology, economics, technology, identity
and historiography; we hope to bring hidden histories of sculpture to light and
to stimulate new research.
Papers may draw upon the
following and other, unlisted topics:
Materiality
and immaterial objects and environments
Shifting
landscapes and regional identities
Curating
moving/changing collections
The
relationship of an object to its site/s
Trajectories
and temporalities
Technological
reproducibility and reproduction, travelling copies
Home
and belonging, territorialisation
Interpretation
and reception
Public
and private contexts of display
Commercial
drivers of mobility
Movement
at the meta/macro/micro levels
Permanence
and commemoration
Space
and place
The
motives and agents of sculptural mobility
Objects?
life-stories/careers
Exile
and nationalism
Environment
and installation
Construction
and destruction
Continuity
and rupture
Moving
image and sound
Performativity
and participation
The interchange of centres and peripheries of
production and consumption
Papers from the Symposium may be published in a special issue of the journal Scandinavica. An International Journal of
Scandinavian Studies published by Norvik Press and funded by NOP-HS (Joint
Committee for Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and the Social
Sciences). This symposium is funded by the Henry Moore Foundation.
We invite proposals for twenty-minute papers from academics,
early career researchers, postdocs and PhD students, artists and curators.
Paper abstracts (maximum 300 words) and a short bio (maximum 100 words) should
be submitted to Elettra Carbone (elettra.carbone@ucl.ac.uk) and Sara Ayres (S.Ayres@kingston.ac.uk) by March 15 2013.
August Strindberg (1849-1912) is Sweden’s best-known playwright. But he was also a novelist, artist, amateur scientist and iconoclast. To mark the centenary of his death, from 22 September to 21 October, UCL Scandinavian Studies will be transforming the North Lodge at the entrance to UCL’s main quad into The Red Room. Röda Rummet (The Red Room) is the title of Strindberg’s most famous novel, named after the salon where he and his friends would meet in fin-de-siècle Stockholm to discuss politics, science, art, and anything else that took their fancy.
The Red Room at UCL will be a place to find out more about Strindberg and read his plays or novels in a comfy armchair. More importantly, though, it will be a space where anyone can talk about anything, in true salon style. We’ll be programming bite-sized talks, discussions and performances by academics of all disciplines, students, writers, translators, actors, literature aficionados, and more.
Over seventy people crammed into Committee Room One of the Scottish Parliament last Friday to listen to two experts in different elements of the Norwegian outdoor experience talk about their own approaches to it and what this could entail for Scotland.
Delegates from the 2012 Nordic Research Network conference, hosted by the Scandinavian Studies section at the University of Edinburgh, and members of the public heard from literary scholar Dr Ellen Rees and outdoor educationalist Dr Ralf Westphal about different aspects of Norway’s famous tradition of friluftsliv (outdoor life).
Dr Guy Puzey presenting at the NRN conference in George Sq
Ellen, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Oslo, told the audience about her ongoing research into the literary significance of the rural cabin in Norwegian society, emphasising the central role which so-called ‘cabin culture’ plays in Norwegian cultural life. Ellen is presently engaged in writing a book about the portrayal of the cabin in Norway and revealed how the cabin and the associated stoic outdoor lifestyle can act as a barometer for the changing face of Norwegian society. Starting with the first public cabins instituted by the Norwegian Trekking Association (DNT) in the 1800s, Ellen traced the evolution of the cabin in Norway. In contrast to the small one-room fishermen’s and mountain huts of the early days, Norway’s cabins have become increasingly more elaborate and numerous. Ellen showed how the Norwegian mountain cabins began in a similar way to shielings in Scotland, acting as a residence for people away in the mountains for a period of the year to watch cattle and tend the land. She also illustrated how the definition of a cabin, or hytte, is somewhat nebulous and ever more frequently encompasses large alpine chalets owned by Norway’s increasingly wealthy upper class. Her presentation outlined both the centrality of the rural retreat to many aspects of Norwegian culture and the problems created by access to the countryside and the challenges of expanding hut communities in the natural landscape, concluding that huts and outdoor access were nominally a good thing but that Norway was a warning as well as an example of what can happen through countryside access.
The assembled panel in Committee Room One
Ellen was followed by Ralf, who presented a comparative study he has written on outdoor education and culture in Britain and Norway. Ralf emphasised that much of Norway’s outdoor culture in fact has its roots in the adventuring of the British upper classes and is marked by the philosophy of the deep ecology movement, perpetuated through organisations such as the DNT and the Norwegian system of folk high schools, in which he himself has worked. Ralf’s study concluded that British outdoor education is centred very much around problem-solving, adversity and the idea of building individual character which makes it something of an elitist and liberally-inclined activity designed to develop strong leaders and individual success. Norway on the other hand has a rich tradition of outdoor education as a means of understanding folk culture and achieving contact with and an understanding of the natural world. The Norwegian folk high schools provide state subsidised access to the countryside for extended periods, often between secondary school and university, and are a unique resource which has no parallel in Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. Access to the countryside via outdoor education projects is something available to young people in Norway, as opposed to the exclusivist and increasingly corporate ethos which dominates British countryside access and the affordability and nature of outdoor experience.
After our two speakers had presented their work they were joined on the panel by Professor Pete Higgins, head of the Outdoor Education section at the University of Edinburgh, and Alison Johnstone MSP, Green member for the Lothians region and kind host of the evening’s event.
Dr Ellen Rees presents her ideas
In answer to a question from moderator Dominic Hinde, Pete voiced his opinion that investment in outdoor education, however expensive, would have a highly positive impact in Scotland. Pete’s view was that the Norwegian education system is far better at focusing on the personal development of children and does not emphasise testing as the only measure of educational success. Whilst Scotland finds itself in a far better position than England with regards to outdoor education, his conclusion was that there was still much to be done to move outdoor education into the mainstream.
Alison Johnstone, in reference to the affordability of both private cabins and the DNT system in Norway, suggested that politicians potentially have the ability to make such opportunities open to all and not the preserve of a privileged few. Alison illustrated her point by revealing how a recent holiday in a Lochaber woodland cabin with her family had cost several hundred pounds and that it absurdly enough would have been cheaper to take a week in Spain than in Scotland.
As the floor was opened up to the audience the room heard from members of the public and representatives from the Carbeth Hutters Community, Reforesting Scotland and the Thousand Huts campaign, discussing the challenges faced by Scottish hutters and educationalists in making sure that the countryside is a resource accessible by all. A Thousand Huts’ Ninian Stewart voiced his hope that a turnaround in our contact with the outdoors could be part of a much larger re-evaluation of Scotland’s societal priorities. Dr Bjarne Thomsen from the University of Edinburgh concluded by emphasising that the heart of the hutting philosophy in Norway, Sweden and Denmark is the idea that wealth, location and background should not be an obstacle to enjoyment of the outdoors, and that in Scandinavia successive governments have recognised and facilitated this.
We are very grateful for the continued support of the Royal Norwegian Consulate General in Edinburgh, the Nordic embassies in London, University College London and the University of Edinburgh in sponsoring and facilitating this event.
The organisers of the Nordic Research Network 2012 at the University of Edinburgh are very pleased to announce the draft conference programme and registration information. These details can be found on the NRN 2012 section of this website.
We are also delighted to announce that, in connection with the NRN, a discussion event will be held at the Scottish Parliament on the evening of Friday 24 February, kindly hosted by Alison Johnstone MSP and with refreshments sponsored by the Royal Norwegian Consulate General. This extra event, entitled 'Building Cabins and Building Character: Using the Outdoors in Britain and Norway' will feature Ellen Rees (Scandinavian Studies, University of Oslo), Ralf Westphal and Peter Higgins (both of the Outdoor Education programme at the University of Edinburgh), and will be chaired by Dominic Hinde (Scandinavian Studies, University of Edinburgh).
A PDF version of the draft conference programme, including a map of the venues, can also be found at this link.
Exciting news! The Nordic Research Network 2012 conference has been announced!
Nordic Research Network
Conference for Postgraduate Students and Early-Career Researchers
The University of Edinburgh, 23-24 February 2012
Announcement and invitation
Scandinavian Studies at the University of Edinburgh invites participants to the Nordic Research Network 2012. This two-day interdisciplinary conference on 23-24 February 2012 will bring together postgraduate students and early-career researchers from Edinburgh and the rest of the UK currently researching topics relating to the Nordic area. The event will also incorporate a knowledge exchange workshop on communicating the developing role of lesser-taught languages in the university sector.
Following on from the successful first Nordic Research Network symposium held at University College London in 2010, students and early-career researchers will present the objectives or results of their current research. Through presentations, discussions, socialising activities and workshops, the conference will offer an ideal platform for the sharing of ideas and for dialogue with like-minded peers, as well as an opportunity to explore the significance of studying the Nordic area in the UK research environment.
Further information, contact details and call for papers can be viewed under the NRN 2012 tab.
In case any of you are interested in a career in translation-
"If you specialise in a Nordic language and are pondering a career in translation, please do come along to this informal presentation on 2nd November. All welcome!
Anu Carnegie-Brown of STP Nordic Translation:
"A Rough Guide to Careers in Nordic Translation and Translation Project Management"
Wednesday 2 November 2011 17.00-18.00 Malet Place Engineering Building, room 1.04 (UCL identity card needed to enter the building)"
