LUCK Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge

New Centre for the Circulation of Knowledge and Contemporary History to be installed in Lund!

Sweden’s leading private financier of economic research, Handelsbankens forskningsstiftelser, has decided to fund a new centre at the Department of History in Lund: Centrum för kunskapsspridning och samtidshistoria (CEKOS) [Centre for the Circulation of Knowledge and Contemporary History]. The centre will focus on fostering the circulation of knowledge in Swedish society and on conducting historical…

Autumn seminar series @LUCK

13 October, 13.00-14.30 (Zoom) Book Launch: The History of Education as History of Knowledge Björn Lundberg (Lund University), Joel Barnes (University of Queensland), Fanny Isensee, (Tampere University), Joakim Landahl (Stockholm University) & Daniel Töpper (Humboldt University of Berlin) 2 November, 13.15-15.00 (LUX:A332) Silicon Valley Knowledge: A New Venture for the Historians of Knowledge David Larsson…

New article: Islands of uncertainty: promises, time, and nuclear test sites

One of our affiliated researchers, Anton Öhman, has recently published Islands of uncertainty: promises, time, and nuclear test sites. The article examines how French nuclear testing in French Polynesia was repeatedly justified through promises about the future. From Charles de Gaulle to François Mitterrand and Emmanuel Macron, presidential discourse presented nuclear testing, and later its…

New special issue: “Mapping the Europeanisation of Universities in the 1980s and 1990s”

In a new special issue of European Educational Research Journal (2026, Vol. 25, no. 3), Johan Östling, Maria Simonsen, Marie-Gabrielle Verbergt, Martin Kristoffer Hamre and Karl Haikola offer comprehensive analyses of the Europeanisation of universities during the 1980s and 1990s. It is the result of their ongoing research project and the issue consists of a joint introduction,…

Visiting researcher: Clémence Cardon-Quint

From 27 April to 22 May, Clémence Cardon-Quint will be a visiting researcher at LUCK. She is an educational historian and professor of contemporary history at the University of Montpellier Paul Valéry. On 29 April at 11.45–13.00 (in LUX:A331), Clémence Cardon-Quint will present her research during a lunch seminar. It concerns the history of educational…

The third History of Knowledge Conference (Utrecht, 2027)

The third History of Knowledge Conference will be organized in Utrecht on 25–27 August 2027. The conference follows the successful first international History of Knowledge Conference in Porto in 2023, and the second edition, hosted by the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge in 2025. Utrecht University is home of the Descartes Centre for the History…

CfP: Merit, Worth, and Social Advancement in the Early Modern World

Call for Papers Merit, Worth, and Social Advancement in the Early Modern World: Rethinking Meritocracy as a Category of Historical Analysis University of Hamburg, 7–8 September 2026 Organised by Carolin Gluchowski (Universität Hamburg) and Asger Wienberg (Lund University) Conceptual Framework The term meritocracy is a modern one. Coined in the twentieth century and shaped by…

New deputy directors: Isak Hammar and Kajsa Weber

In March 2026, we are delighted to welcome Isak Hammar and Kajsa Weber as the new deputy directors of LUCK. They succeed Anna Nilsson Hammar and David Larsson Heidenblad. Johan Östling remains the director. Isak Hammar and Kajsa Weber, who have long been part of LUCK’s inner circle, will work alongside Johan Östling to lead…

Thank you, Anna and David!

When LUCK was launched in March 2020, it did not emerge in a vacuum. It developed from a series of collaborations (reading groups, seminars, workshops, grant applications) at the Department of History during the second half of the 2010s, aimed at exploring the history of knowledge and introducing it as a new field in the…

New editors-in-chief of HIC: Andersen, Hammar & Steinberg

From 2021 to 2026, History of Intellectual Culture (HIC) International Yearbook of Knowledge and Society has been edited by Charlotte A. Lerg (Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich), Johan Östling (Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge (LUCK), Lund University), and Jana Weiß (The University of Texas at Austin). In 2025, Isak Hammar (Lund Centre for the…