Two new projects are developing in close connection with our research environment. We are very much looking forward to follow your work!

Evelina Kallträsk

Entrepreneurial knowledge: Ung företagsamhet and the development of views of childhood and entrepreneurship in Sweden 1980–2020 

This PhD project examines how views of childhood, youth and entrepreneurship have developed in Sweden since the 1980s, focusing on the non-profit-organization Ung företagsamhet (Junior Achievement Sweden) as a knowledge actor. Ung företagsamhet (UF) was founded in 1980, adapted to a Swedish context from the American counterpart Junior Achievement (founded in 1919). Initially, this organisation was met with strong opposition and had to struggle to establish itself as a serious knowledge actor giving teenagers practical experience of running a small scale business. However, over the last four decades, it has gradually achieved real influence. In 2011, the new Swedish curricula were implemented, in which entrepreneurship plays a central part of the schools’ overarching mission. At the same time, UF started producing teaching materials concerning entrepreneurship for younger children and its high school concept is known by teachers throughout Sweden. Since its foundation in 1980, UF has grown and developed its knowledge mission. Over the same period, society’s views of children, youth, entrepreneurship and relevant knowledge have changed. This project investigates the social development that has led to entrepreneurial knowledge being seen as essential, and thus implemented in the curricula of Swedish schools at all levels. One of the project’s aims is to develop the history of knowledge by focusing on a knowledge actor and a type of knowledge outside of the academic elite, and by combining perspectives from the history of knowledge with perspectives from the history of childhood. 

Trine Gaarde Outzen

World change through human change: Pietistic knowledge and practices of medical and spiritual health in Halle in the early 18th. Century

This dissertation project analyses how medical and spiritual knowledge of health was a part of pietistic utopian thought and practice in Halle an der Saale, Germany in the early 18. Century. The thesis of the project is that, in the pietistic context in Halle, dietetic knowledge and the Christian concept of Christus Medicus were intertwined and that medical knowledge became a part of a salvation strategy as well as a useful tool to criticize contemporary society. Health was conceptualised as a prophylactic strategy which implies a practical aspect why the project also aims to analyse how knowledge of health was practiced in Halle and which kind of problems and conflicts these practices met. The project is embedded in a social constructivist view on medicine and religion and takes an approach to knowledge put forward by the History of Knowledge and the German historian Simone Lässig. Lässig claims that the limits between knowledge and faith are fluid and in different times different claims of the world were considered as truths. Based on this the project wants to move beyond a dichotomous understanding of scientific knowledge and religious faith. By contrast the project proposes an approach where faith is considered a knowledge that equals medical knowledge. Trines research interests are the history of medicine and psychiatry and the intersection between knowledge, emotions, religion and science in the early modern period. 

Photo by Hilthart Pedersen on Unsplash