Nordic models: The culture and politics of a region
In our historical present, to engage in the study of culture requires an examination of the cultural contexts and their histories from where we speak, listen, and act. Our research engages the Nordic region, and more specifically the welfare state, as a distinct framework for the positionalities and perspectives whose implicit notions are often taken for granted and remain an un-scrutinized backdrop of the study of art and culture.

Our research revisits the dominant and the marginal, and the residual and the emergent cultural histories of the Nordic now. While we share an interest in what has come to be known in political science as a specific type of nation-state, the Nordic welfare state, and in its genealogies, its promises, and its paradoxes, we are more concerned with the Nordic welfare model not as a state model but as a cultural model. Viewed as a specific cultural structure, the Nordic welfare model is a model of and for the senses, which is to say a model structuring aesthetic regimes, cultures of feeling, and ways of belonging. Just some of the questions we consider include: How best to understand the aesthetic and affective conventions of Scandinavian nationalism? What are the recurring tropes in the staging of “Nordicness” – and what and who is left out of this specific cultural and political framing?
Our meta-perspective this semester: positioning. How and why, or why not, do we (and our international colleagues) situate ourselves explicitly in our writing and otherwise? This will be a red thread in cluster meetings.
7-9 January
Writing Retreat
Venue: Stuebjerggård
Fri 28 February, 12:00-14:00
On Everyday Utopias
Tue Andersen Nexø
Mon 17 March, 13:00-14:00
”Folkelighed”
Xenia Brown Pallesen
Mon 31 March
Isumasioqatigiinneq eqqaasitsisoq – A Re-Membering Seminar
With Vivi Sørensen, Jessie Kleemann, Elisabeth Blind Heilman, Sara Aviaja Hammeken, Sirí Paulsen, Kuluk Helms, Naja Dyrendom Graugaard, Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt and more
Fri 4 April, 13:00-15:00
Findings: The Art of Nordic Colonialism
Mathias Danbolt
Mon 19 May, 10:00-12:00
Indigeneity and the Nordics
Tues 10 June, 13:00-15:00 (NB: New Date!)
The Black Panther Party in Scandinavia Robert Nilsson Mohammadi
Tues 17 June, 18:00-20:30
Dinner
The programme is subject to change. For more information, please contact head of cluster, Devika Sharma, thanks.
Projects
- Curating the Contemporary in the Art Museum
- Feminist emergency: Women artists and feminist art in Denmark over the last sixty years in a globalized context
- Gendering Music Matter (GEMMA)
- The communities of separatism - Affects in and around separatist artist collectives in the Nordic countries, contact: Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt
- The Art of Nordic Colonialism Writing Transcultural Art Histories
Groups
- The 1930s today (in Danish)
Centres
Researchers
Internal
Name | Title | Phone | |
---|---|---|---|
Cramer, Nina | Enrolled PhD Student | +4535335087 | |
Ehlers, Jeannette Pollard | PhD Student | ||
Ellegaard, Line | Postdoc | +4535320534 | |
Gaonkar, Anna Meera | Teaching Assistant Professor | +4551225698 | |
Greaves, Kerry | Associate Professor | +4522744513 | |
Holme, Oliver Wiant Rømer | PhD Fellow | +4535328909 | |
Moore, Signe Søndergaard | PhD Fellow | +4535336139 | |
Nexø, Tue Andersen | Associate Professor | +4535321268 | |
Pallesen, Xenia Brown | PhD Fellow | +4535336552 | |
Ringsager, Kristine | Associate Professor | ||
Schmidt, Cecilie Ullerup | Associate Professor | ||
Sharma, Devika | Associate Professor | +4535329261 | |
Suneson, Ellen | Guest Researcher | ||
Tygstrup, Frederik | Deputy Head of Department | +4535328207 | |
Ullman, Anna | PhD Fellow | +4535336306 |
Affiliated participants
Niklas Freisleben Lund (SDU)
Solveig Daugaard (AU)
Steering Committee
Ellen Suneson
Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt
Kristine Ringsager
Devika Sharma