The aim of the research programme Nordic Spaces: Formation of States, Societies and Regions, Cultural Encounters, and Idea and Identity Production in Northern Europe after 1800 is to generate new research on Northern Europe and research collaboration within the region.
Professor in Cultural Heritage and the Uses of History at the Culture Studies department, Linköping University. Leader of the National History – Nordic Culture project.
Peter Aronsson (1959) is Professor in Cultural Heritage and the Uses of History since 2001 at a multi-disciplinary Culture Studies department, Linköping University. PhD in history, Lund University 1992. His dissertation dealt with the historic conditions for creating a durable democratic culture. The role of historical narrative and consciousness to direct action has been focused in recent research both as regards historiography proper and the uses of the past in the historical culture at large Currently he is co-ordinating several international projects exploring the uses of the past in National Museums. See www.namu.se, www.nordicspaces.eu, www.eunamu.eu He is also pursuing a project that will interpret the historiographical tradition in a critical analyses, see www.histcon.se.
Among his recent publications are together with Simon Knell and A. Amundsen, (eds). National Museums. Studies from around the World. (London: Routledge, 2010 (in prep)); “National cultural heritage – Nordic cultural memory: negotiating politics, identity and knowledge.” Transnationale Erinnerungsorte: Nord- und Südeuropeische Perspektiven (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2009) “The Image of the Peasant within National Museums in the Nordic Countries.” Societal change and ideological formation among the rural population of the baltic area 1880-1939 (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2008); “Representing community: National museums negotiating differences and community in Nordic countries.” Scandinavian Museums and Cultural Diversity. (Paris, Oxford, New York: UNESCO; Berghahn Books, 2008);: Aronsson, Peter, Narve Fulsås, Pertti Haapala & Bernard Eric Jensen. “Nordic National Histories.” The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories. (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
This project investigates how images of Norden as a supranational identity have provided, and continue to provide, arenas for negotiating political, military, social, economical, ethical and cultural understandings of community in specific public and nationalised contexts, using museums as the focal point.