NRN 2013 Keynote speaker announced

We are very excited to announce that the NRN 2013 keynote speaker is Andrew Newby. Newby is a Docent at the Department of World Cultures at Helsinki University. As a historian whose research covers both the Nordic region and Britain, he is an especially apt speaker to start off our conference of UK-based Nordic research. 

His keynote paper is titled 

"The Cradle of Our Noblest Energies and Blood": Victorian Britain's

(Ab)use of Scandinavian History.

Call for Papers - Sculptural Mobilites

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.

Deadline for Submission, 15th March 2013

Strindberg's Red Room at UCL

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.

Please see the Event Calendar for details of what’s on, or browse events using the ‘event categories’ drop-down menu to the right.

The Red Room is generously supported by the Embassy of Sweden in London, and facilitated by UCL Museums & Public Engagement.

Nordic Research Network 2012

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.

A Rough Guide to Careers in Nordic Translation and Translation Project Management

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)"

Book Camp!

"Book Camp: A hands-on introduction to publishing".

"Book Camp" provides a hands-on introduction to desktop publishing for
academic and support staff, students, social enterprises, and anyone else
who needs to develop their skills in producing professional-looking
publications on a budget. The initiative is supported by UCL Knowledge
Transfer Champions funding. In the spirit of Knowledge Exchange, this
workshop aims to establish a platform of communication between the
publishing business and universities. Book Camp is also supported by
collaboration between UCL Advances and Norvik Press, a small publishing
company specialising in Scandinavian languages and culture, based at the
Department of Scandinavian Studies, UCL.

During this two-day workshop we will discuss various aspects of the
publishing business. Thanks to the help of many experts in the field, we
will talk about the publishing cycle, the changing status of the book and
we will learn more about publishing at UCL. All participants will also be
able to gain hands-on experience in developing marketing techniques and in
creating books, journals and magazines.

The workshop is open to all staff and students at UCL as well as to
members of the wider public. Please note that admission is free but there
is only a limited number of places available. If you would like to attend
please fill in the attached form and email Dr Elettra Carbone at
norvikevents(a)gmail.com by Friday 28th October. You will receive a
confirmation e-mail by Monday 31st October.

If you would like to take part in the publishing workshop on 8th November
please remember to bring with you a text (and pictures) of your choice.
This could be an article or a review you have written, a fictional text
you are particularly fond of, etc. During the second part of the InDesign
workshop we will show you how to prepare this text for publication in a
journal.