Research at the HVC

The Hugo Valentin Centre provides a markedly interdisciplinary research environment, uniting scholars from disciplines across the humanities and social research. The research can roughly divided into research fields of Holocaust and genocide studies, and research on minorities and ethnic relations.

Research in the field of Holocaust and genocide studies has a major focus on the social and social-psychological dynamics of violence, transitional justice, geostatistical analysis (GIS) and memory culture in relation to the Holocaust and other outbreaks of mass violence.

Current research projects

Entanglements of the British Empire, the Holocaust and the Perpetration of Extreme Violence

Project leader: Michelle Gordon
Funding: Swedish Research Council
Research focus: Holocaust, British Empire, knowledge and the Holocaust, racism and antisemitism, racialised violence
Project start: March 2024

The Stockholm Declaration of 2000 placed the victims of the Holocaust and other genocides at the centre of European memory and was deemed a bulwark against racism, intolerance and persecution. Holocaust history is relevant specifically relevant in Britain as this is related to the British Empire, a history of colonial violence and the entanglements of imperial spaces with the Holocaust. However, these connections tend to be ignored. According to national British narratives, the country has been the liberator and rescuer from persecution, it fought the ‘good war’ in World War II, and achieved victory against Nazi Germany by ‘standing alone’. Rather than adopting this narrative, project takes the starting point that British history, rather than being in marked contrast to Nazi genocide, provides an important historical context to the violence of fascism in Europe and will analyse the entanglements of the British Empire and the Holocaust in a variety of ways.

This three-year project analyses the entanglements of the British Empire and the Holocaust, related to contexts of racial violence and colonial worldviews. The central focus of this project is British troops who fought in colonial contexts during World War II and after. It analyses what British soldiers knew about the Holocaust throughout World War II and how they discussed, disseminated and processed this information, particularly in relation to racial perspectives. Drawing on a theoretical framework from studies on mass violence and transimperial history this project examines how these troops understood and rationalised this violence. Not only did British troops fight Nazi Germany, they also fought in colonial contexts and many went on to participate in colonial warfare in the post-war period. This project will investigate if, and how, these men reflected on their actions in the context of Nazi genocide, their experiences in the war, and human rights rhetoric will be examined. These events are analysed within one analytical framework which assesses these men and their careers within a continuity, rather than treating their WWII and imperial careers as separate phenomena. This project works towards a more nuanced understanding of the historical contexts of the Holocaust and racism, as well as new knowledge on the entanglements of the British Empire, its World War II campaign and the Holocaust.

Navigating through Complexity: Intergenerational Transmission of Genocide Memories in the Context of Authoritarianism

Project leader: Savina Sirik
Funding: HVC (Postdoc project)
Research focus: Intergenerational memory, genocide
Project start: 1 September 2023

After the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979), Cambodia experienced a rapid increase in its youth population. However, these youths have inherited a divided society that characterizes survivors as either victims or perpetrators. Despite coming of age during an era of relative peace and stability, Cambodian youth live in an increasingly repressive regime where the government continues to use the genocide past to legitimize its authoritarian rule. Oppositions have been dissolved, independent media forced to close, and activists jailed. The silencing of critical voices, coupled with the conflicting accounts of victims and perpetrators, presents a complex environment for youth, especially those from the families of perpetrators, to make sense of the genocide past.

This research project aims to further our understanding of intergenerational memories of genocides among young generations of perpetrators in the context of authoritarianism. The project will investigate how memories of the Khmer Rouge period are passed on to the second and third generations of perpetrators and how youth navigate conflicting and complex narratives of the genocide. Data will be collected through in-depth interviews with members of the younger generation of former Khmer Rouge and former Khmer Rouge members themselves in multiple communities in Cambodia.

Japan and Postwar Memory: Politicians, Parties and the Public

Project leader: Ivo Plsek
Funding: Hugo Valentin Center
Research focus: Japanese politics, Comparative Memory Studies, Interstate reconciliation: East Asia - Europe
Project start: 1 September 2023

Nearly eighty years have passed since the end of World War Two, yet unresolved memories continue to haunt Japan and East Asia. What are the origins of this problem and what factors have complicated the post-war reconciliation process in the region? This project, while comparative in nature, focuses on the main actor in this narrative: Japan and its handling of past legacies after 1945. I study two levels of Japanese memory: official and collective. In the first part, I examine how Japanese political elites approached remembrance and interstate reconciliation in the early postwar period (1945 through the end of the 1970s). I am particularly interested in the role that pre-war legacies played in policymaking after 1945. I find that biographical path dependency significantly influenced the decision-making process and contrast the situation with postwar Germany where I observe similar mechanics at play. In the second part, I investigate the societal level of public memory. I study how the Japanese remembered and grappled with World War Two experiences through their cinematographic production. I analyze 150 war films to identify the main themes and approaches adopted, which continue to inform Japanese society’s understanding of its history today. Both projects rely on the study of primary sources and explore themes that have not yet been sufficiently covered in the literature. The ultimate goal is to offer novel empirical insights into the construction of Japanese remembrance and the dynamics of memory politics in the region.

Improvisation and hope in the face of assimilation: Mongolian identities in a changing China

Project leader: Gegentuul Bai
Funding: Riksbankens Jubileumsfond
Research focus: Minority Studies
Project start: January 1, 2023

China’s ideological transformation from a multi-ethnic nation to a unified Chinese state essentially consisting of one people speaking one language (Mandarin Chinese) has led to a significant shift in ethnic policies in the last few years. The arrival of assimilationist ethnic policies across frontier regions has begun to pose a serious threat to the maintenance of minority languages, cultures and identities, including those of Mongols in Inner Mongolia – an ethnic minority region in northern China. Against such backdrop, this project investigates the Mongolian linguistic and cultural activities organized by Mongol intelligentsia groups, including Mongolian speech contests, online poem recitation activities, weekly discussions at Mongolian book clubs, and cultural immersion tours in pastoral regions. It draws on traditional ethnographic methods and digital ethnography to shed light on the construction and performance of Mongolian ethnolinguistic and cultural identities. It also aims to understand how minority intellectuals negotiate the broader national discourses and policies. The project contributes to our understanding of indigenous knowledge production process and identity performance in the context of Chinese nation building as well as the shifting state-minority and centre-periphery relations. Further, it brings sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological scholarship into a fruitful conversation with Chinese minority studies.

Witnessing the Holocaust: Spain and Portugal during the Second World War

Project leader: Santiago López Rodríguez
Funding: Riksbankens Jubileumsfond
Research focus: Holocaust Studies, Jewish refugees.
Project start: January 1, 2023

In the last two decades, the field of Holocaust history has experienced the appearance of new studies about the peripheral countries that were not directly involved in the genocide but played a relevant role through other means. During the war, the Iberian Peninsula emerged as the best way to escape from Europe. However, the relationship between the dictatorial regimes in this area and the Holocaust has gone unnoticed. This project aims to analyse the changes in refugee policies carried out by Spain and Portugal during the Second World War and give more insight into the role of the humanitarian organisations in both countries.

By performing a comparative study between Portugal and Spain, this research will widen our understanding of how international relationships affected these countries’ roles as bystanders, rescuers, and enablers to the Holocaust. At the same time, it will deepen and give new perspectives on the neutral states’ responses in the context of the Second World War. To this end, this comparative study will analyse the documents of the political and diplomatic representatives who were in charge of giving the orders and issuing visas and the memoirs and testimonies of those refugees who were forced to embark on a tumultuous journey through the Pyrenees.

The New Memory Politics in Poland

Project leader: Tadek Markiewicz
Funding: HVC (postdoc-project)
Research focus: Politics and international security
Project start: August 2022

At the heart of this project is the rise of the new memory policies in Poland. The study will examine why and how Poland adopts new memory policies. Furthermore, to understand the role of context and the meaning behind the state’s memory policies, it will investigate how political elites understand the role Poland’s memory policies play in the state’s politics. The study will be based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with Polish state officials as well as field observations of memory politics.

The systematic empirical study of the practices and motivations behind Poland’s emerging memory policies will identify processes beyond the internal politics of the state. Today, the EU’s Western and Eastern European member states are in deepening conflict over the rule of law and the future shape of the union. Memory politics play a key role in this battle. While ‘the West’ is increasingly institutionalising Holocaust remembrance, ‘the East’ wants to promote the remembrance of communist regimes' crimes. Analysing the way in which Poland uses memory at home and abroad will allow us to better understand the motivations behind the new revisionist politics in Eastern Europe.

‘God sees all this and is mute to us’. A Comparative Study of Religious Rationalisation in the Perpetration of the Holocaust and the Genocide in Rwanda

Project leader: Olov Simonsson
Funding: HVC (Postdoc-project)
Research focus: Religion and genocide
Project start: 17 August 2022

This project assesses perpetrator rationalisations in committing genocidal violence in direct relation to religious faith. Focusing on the Holocaust (1939—45) and the genocide in Rwanda (1994), this project explores how Christian perpetrators reconciled their faith with the genocidal violence they committed. While perpetrator studies is a burgeoning research area, there is a lack of studies on the role of religion and genocide. The project will undertake a comparative contextual analysis of religiously influenced language among perpetrators of both genocides, through court transcripts, letters and diaries. The central aim is to discern whether the personal religious beliefs of perpetrators of genocide served as a help or hindrance in the genocidal killings, and if their beliefs were altered, by themselves or others, to justify the killings.

Hitherto, studies of religion in genocides have focused on the role of churches, church representatives and the religiosity of elites, while those who committed the killings have been overlooked. This project will further our understanding of the role and importance of religion and faith as contributing factors in genocides and mass violence. As such, it grapples with fundamental questions regarding the nature of humanity and how it is that ‘ordinary’ people of faith find themselves willing to commit genocidal violence.

Swedish and Swedish Jewish intellectual responses to Italian Fascism and German Nazism during the interwar period and the Second World War

Project leader: Olof Bortz
Funding: Wenner-Gren Foundation
Research focus: Anti-fascism, Jewish history, responses to Nazism
Project start: 1 January 2022

Most research on Swedish and Swedish Jewish history in relation to totalitarian regimes during the twentieth century has focused on Nazism, Swedish German history and the Holocaust. This is understandable given the direct link between political developments in Germany, the outbreak of the Second World War and the Jewish genocide. At the same time historians have by and large neglected the wider political context which German Nazism was part of. This project explores Swedish and Swedish Jewish responses to different forms of fascism, including Nazism, starting with the Swedish encounter with the Italian Fascist regime established in 1922. How did Swedish and Swedish Jewish intellectuals participating in the public debate respond to the emergence of Italian Fascism? How did their understanding of this new ideology change during the 1930s when fascism spread to other European countries and with the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939? By situating the reactions of Swedish Jews within the larger context of contemporary political debates, the project adds to the fields of Swedish and European political and intellectual history, Swedish Jewish history, and the history of antifascism.

Integration against all odds? A longitudinal cohort study of Ostjuden children in Sweden, 1880–1920

Project leader: Carl Henrik Carlsson
Funding: Stiftelsen Marcus och Amalia Wallenbergs Minnesfond
Research focus: Swedish Jewish History
Project start: July 1, 2020

How did the children of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe fare? And why? These are two of the questions the project intends to answer. The project is tracing the lives up to adulthood of all the 700+ children of Jewish immigrants from the Russian tsarist empire, most of them from Russian Poland, who lived in Sweden in 1880. Those immigrants were not viewed kindly, and experienced a great deal of prejudice, some of it even from established Swedish Jews. They faced obstacles of various kinds, and although immigration was unrestricted and limited in Sweden, which had seen high levels of emigration, they suffered discrimination, for example when they applied for citizenship.

Researcher Carl Henrik Carlsson will be studying how these children overcame these hardships, managing to integrate in Swedish society, including the Swedish–Jewish community. Some of the questions to be addressed are: To what extent did these children undergo a class journey? Which sectors of society did they work in? To what extent did they seek out those of the same faith in their professional lives? Did they stay in Sweden or did they, like so many others, emigrate to the U.S.? To what extent did they change their family names for integration purposes or convert to Christianity? What were their patterns of marriage?

The ‘Civilised’ Nature of Nineteenth-Century Warfare? British and German Practices of Violence in Colonial and Intra-European Wars

Project leader: Michelle Gordon
Funding: Swedish Research Council
Research focus: Extreme violence in colonial and intra-European warfare
Project start: August 2020

Historians have traditionally divided nineteenth-century warfare into two separate categories: ‘civilised’/European and ‘uncivilised’/‘colonial’ and have hitherto neglected to explore the interconnections between the two. In recent years, genocide scholars have rediscovered Hannah Arendt’s ‘boomerang thesis’, however, her concept too rigidly conceptualises the perceived ‘coming home’ of colonialism with the advent of genocide on European soil. This project addresses these shortcomings by placing intra-European and colonial conflict within a comparative framework.

This project reassesses the role of European troops in committing extreme violence in intra-European and colonial conflicts in the nineteenth century. My focus is on the cases of Britain and Germany and I will undertake empirical analysis of first-hand accounts by British and German soldiers and examine the perspectives of those who took part in atrocities in both contexts, utilising recent perpetrator research. Knowledge was transferred between the metropole and the periphery; however, this ‘traffic’ went in both directions and violent practices were ‘learnt’ and applied in both settings concurrently, to different degrees, prior to genocidal violence on European soil in the twentieth century. This study will focus on the role of perceptions of one’s opponent in justifying extreme violence, taking up the concepts of ‘race’, ‘inferiority’ and ‘illegitimacy’. It will comprise three case studies in the ‘totalisation’ of war: the Franco-Prussian War, Crimean War and the Boxer Rebellion in China.

The Unwanted Citizens: The Holocaust and the Aryanization of Jewish Property in Romania and the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), 1940-1945

Project leader: Goran Miljan
Other participants at the HVC: Anders Blomqvist
Funding: Stiftelsen Marcus och Amalia Wallenbergs Minnesfond
Research focus: Holocaust history
Project start: July 1, 2019

The forced transfer of Jewish property into “Aryan” hands (Aryanization) represented one of the crucial aspects of the process of exclusion of Jews from European societies during the Holocaust. The same process took place in the Axis partner states, Romania and the Independent State of Croatia – NDH during WWII. As active participants in the Holocaust the two regimes engaged in the mass dispossession of Jewish wealth for the purpose of reshaping their societies and changing the perceived internal power structure through the distribution of jobs, businesses and real estate to the “dominant” ethnic community.

This project investigates the policies and practices of Aryanization conducted in Romania and the NDH during WWII. By focusing on antisemitism, legislation, bureaucracy, policy implementation, and gentile and Jewish responses, the project examines the ideological, political, and legal factors that shaped this Aryanization in three major urban areas that hosted the largest Jewish communities: Bucharest, Iaşi, and Czernowitz in Romania, and Zagreb, Osijek, and Varaždin in the NDH. In particular, by showing how the Aryanization of minority property was utilized for the purposes of nation and state building during WWII, the project will provide a comparative perspective on the role of Aryanization in the two above-mentioned Axis countries. This comparative perspective will advance the existing scholarship on the dynamics and mutual influences between fascism, Holocaust and nationalization policies in Central and South Eastern Europe. Drawing on new archival collections, a comparative methodology, and state of the art research on fascism and Aryanization, the project will address not only the strategies employed to seize Jewish property but also the responses of gentiles and Jewish citizens.

Segmented Narratives, Conflicting Histories: Social Memory about the Second World War in the Western Balkans, 1989–2018

Project leader: Tomislav Dulić
Other participants at the HVC: Goran Miljan, Roland Kostić
Research focus: Social Memory in Comparative Genocide Studies
Project start: January 2019

Recent political developments have challenged the self-perception of the EU as a union of states sharing a set of universal democratic values arising in opposition to a history plagued by totalitarianism, political repression and genocide. This is particularly evident in the Western Balkans, where intense controversy over the Second World War and its aftermath have affected social and inter-ethnic, as well as diplomatic relations.

The project aims at analysing the shaping of social memory about fascism, collaboration and communism in the context of the Second World War in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina since the end of communism. The analysis is based on a methodologically integrated approach that traces and measures how political change resulted in the segmentation of competing narratives about the past over time. It includes content analyses of academic knowledge-production, media discourses, schoolbooks and curricula; semi-structured interviews with teachers; and a social network analysis that will map the relationship between actors involved in the shaping of social memory over time. The sophisticated and interdisciplinary approach will set new standards for research on social memory while providing a knowledge-base that can be used for developing the tools by which to better understand and address the tensions among Europeans with sometimes conflicting experiences and perceptions of the past.

Sweden and the Jews after the Holocaust: Relief and rehabilitation of Jewish survivors in Sweden, 1945–1960

Project Leader: Pontus Rudberg
Funding: The Hugo Valentin Centre
Research focus: Minority studies/Holocaust history
Project start: July 2017

In total approximately 11,500 individuals registered as liberated Jews came to Sweden in 1945 and 1946. Of these around 3,700 non-Scandinavian Jews arrived in Sweden through the Swedish Red Cross mission in the spring and summer of 1945, and 900 survivors came later in 1945, while around 6,900 came with the UNRRA transports in 1945 and 1946. Another 1,200 Jews arrived in 1947. Initially the Jewish survivors were generally labelled repatriandi or transmigrants and were expected to go home or emigrate to a third country or as soon as possibilities arose. The number of refugees and survivors that stayed and settled in Sweden was more or less the same as the number of the Swedish Jews, around 7,000.

The project aims to contribute with new knowledge about the policies and actions by states and organizations in response to large-scale immigration of refugees and victims of war and other catastrophes, in this case the so called She'erit Hapletah, the surviving remnant of European Jewry after the Holocaust. Relief and rehabilitation activities by governmental bodies and NGO:s and quangos (quasi NGO:s) operating from Sweden, will be studied. Although financed by the Swedish and foreign states and organizations, the operation of the aid activities in Sweden were to a large degree organized and carried by local committees and bodies. The study will be carried out through an analysis of primary sources in the archives of the main relief committees engaged in relief and rehabilitation in Sweden as well as those of their main financiers in Sweden and the US.

Enhancing Development and Security on the Ground? Exploring the Effects of Top-down and Bottom-up Post-conflict Justice and Reconciliation Processes

Project leader: Roland Kostić
Funding: Swedish Research Council
Research focus: Transitional Justice
Project start: January 2017

Recent research in the field of transitional justice has increasingly called attention to debates about whether top-down or bottom up post-conflict justice and reconciliation strategies are more advantageous to pursue in the wake of mass atrocity. While these processes are generally viewed as necessary to deal with past wrongdoings, it remains unclear how participation in top-down or bottom-up processes impacts upon perceptions of security and socioeconomic cooperation in local settings.

The project concerns a comparison of three post-conflict settings that had varying approaches to transitional justice: Sierra Leone, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Mozambique. The first two implemented official, top-down strategies, while the latter relied on locally derived, grassroots processes to overcome their violent pasts. Data will be collected through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with victims and perpetrators who continue to live in the same communities. The project will contribute to Swedish development goals of 1) reducing poverty through understanding how societal trust and social capital can be increased, thus paving the way for economic development; 2) addressing oppression and human rights abuses through understanding how to best stop cycles of violence via reconciliation; and 3) empowering females by exploring how female experiences and needs can be best met in post-conflict settings.

The Living Dead: Yugoslav Camp Prisoners in Norway, 1942-45

Project leader: Tomislav Dulić
Funding: Swedish Research Council
Research focus: microfoundations of violence
Project start: January 2012

Almost 4,300 Yugoslavs were deported to Norway during the Second World War, where they worked on the Norwegian part of Adolf Hitler's "Atlantic Wall". Over sixty percent never returned to their homes in the Balkans, but fell victim to the cold, hunger and disease, or were killed by their German and Norwegian guards. Other experienced the goodness of the many Norwegian civilians who lived near the camps and helped them to survive from one day to another. An additional ninety prisoners managed to escape to freedom in Sweden.

The Yugoslav prisoners' journey from the Balkans to Scandinavia is the basis for the project, which uses teoretical models from the fields of sociology and social psychology to analyze the violence that affected the prisoners from their capture of the former Yugoslavia and throughout their stay in Norway. The analysis is based on documents from archives in Oslo, Stockholm, Belgrade and Ludwigsburg, including materials from war crimes investigations. By combining qualitative sources with statististical data and spatial analyses, the project applies a mixed-methods approach that will hopefully deepen our understanding of the dynamics of violence in the camps.

Past research projects

Atrocity Prevention through Reconciliation: Expanding the Evidence

Project leader: Kate Lonergan
Funding: HVC and the Dept. of Peace and Conflict Research (doctoral project)
Research focus: transitional justice
Project start: January 2017

Atrocities, including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing, are more likely to occur in places that have experienced similar violence in the past. In the aftermath of such violence, reconciliation initiatives strive to transform conflictual identities in order to create an environment of lasting and positive peace. Reconciliation initiatives are often promoted as a tool to prevent the recurrence of violence and atrocity, and stop the escalatory spiral of violence before it begins. However, little empirical evidence exists to understand the relationship between reconciliation and atrocity prevention.

This project will seek to measure the impact of interpersonal reconciliation mechanisms on risk factors for participation in a mass atrocity. By measuring the impact of an interpersonal reconciliation program on atrocity risk factors, this study will contribute new empirical evidence against which previous claims can be judged. In addition to testing theoretical claims about the links between reconciliation and atrocity prevention, this research aims to contribute to indicator development for both reconciliation outcomes and atrocity risk. This project will incorporate an innovative approach to indicator development, using community-based qualitative fieldwork to define locally relevant indicators of reconciliation and atrocity risk.

Only the Best and Brightest: “Intelligence,” “Race” and Educational Policy in Post-WWII US

Project leader: Jim Porter
Funding: Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation
Research focus: Minority studies, Histories of education and scientific racism
Project start: July 1, 2019

This project will investigate how scientific conceptions of “intelligence” (as cognitive “ability”) were transferred and adapted from the interwar to the post-WWII US, and how intelligence testing was more systematically implemented as a part of federal educational policy via the National Defense Education Act of 1958. While existing accounts have attributed this rise in testing to the Cold War politics of the 1957 Sputnik crisis, this project will explore how the 1954 Brown v. Board Supreme Court decision to racially integrate US schools also played an important, though currently unexamined role.

Initial research suggests there were a number of related strategies for remaking hereditarian theories of IQ for a post-WWII context. Using archival sources along with discourse and network analysis, this research will explore a number of these strategies as specific lines of analysis. Because this project traces continuities between interwar race science and eugenics, and a post-WWII push for the selective education of “academically talented” individuals, this approach can inform us about the historical evolution of “race,” racism and what appears to be the rise, by the 1950s, of a neo-hereditarian individualism. It also explores, in the process, how eugenic and hereditarian ideologies were adapted and translated from a politics of “reproductive control” to “educational promotion.” This research hopes to shed new light on the rapidly expanding role of standardized testing both in the US and internationally in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Young meänkieli-speakers in Stockholm: Language repertoire, linguistic practices and identity

Project leader: Constanze Ackermann-Boström
Funding: HVC (Postdoc project)
Research focus: Minority languages and language revitalization
Project start: October 1, 2019

In 2000, Meänkieli (also known as Tornedal Finnish) as well as Finnish, Sami, Romani and Yiddish were declared official minority languages in Sweden. This political decision marks an important shift in Swedish minority politics as these languages were now considered to be part of Swedish cultural heritage and therefore they must be protected and promoted within Swedish society. Consequently, these new legal frameworks also opened additional spaces for minority and indigenous language use.

Meänkieli is a Finno-Ugric language spoken in Northern Sweden, especially in the Tornedal region near the Swedish-Finnish border. Due to long assimilation politics by the Swedish officials and domestic migration to Southern parts of Sweden the number of Meänkieli speakers has beendecreasing dramatically during the twentieth century. This research project studies language revitalization among young Tornedal Finns who are living in Stockholm, i.e. in a metropolis characterized by linguistic, demographic and cultural diversity – often described as super-diversity – and at the same time far away from the core Meänkieli area in Northern Sweden. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews and language portraits, this project focuses on how Meänkieli language speakers in Stockholm recapture their heritage language as well as how their language practices and ideologies have an impact on language revitalization and their identity constructions.

Anomalous Aryans? Western Scientific Racism and the Ainu as a “Lost White Race,” 1868-1941

Project Leader: John Hennessey
Funding: The Hugo Valentin Centre (postdoc project)
Research focus: Minority studies, scientific racism
Project start: January 2019

Starting in the 1870s, Western scientists became increasingly interested this people indigenous to the Okhotsk region in Northeast Asia that challenged many of their assumptions about race and “civilization.” The Ainu appeared to them to both be “Aryan” or “white” and a “primitive,” “dying race” that was being displaced by Japanese colonization, potentially challenging established notions of “white” racial superiority. The role of the Ainu in the production of a Japanese racial national identity has been researched in depth, but its possible impact on Western understandings of race has never been seriously considered.

This project will use European and American scientific studies of the Ainu during the period 1868-1941 to investigate knowledge production within scientific racism. Employing perspectives from political discourse theory, the philosophy of science and postcolonial studies, it will chart Western scientific debates about the Ainu in order to better understand how racial constructions like “whiteness” were produced and legitimized within scientific racism around the turn of the twentieth century. The present moment is ideal for researching the history of racial discrimination against the Ainu as the Japanese government is contemplating a controversial revision of Japan’s Ainu legislation.

‘Last Winter Dad and Mum Came and Fetched Me But Have Not Been Home Yet’: Subaltern Perspectives on the Lives of Romani People in Sweden c. 1780–1840

Project leader: Theresa Johnsson
Funding: The Hugo Valentin Centre (postdoc project)
Research focus: Minority studies, Romani Studies
Project start: August 2018

While it is commonly known that the will to control so-called “Gypsies”has loomed large in West European legislation since the Middle Ages, comparative studies focusing on the social history of Romani people in Europe before the late 19th century are scarce. In this project subaltern history will be engaged with archival sources in order to trace and study the everyday lives of Romani people in mid-Sweden c. 1780-1840. Employing a biographical, microhistorical methodology, critical questions are posed about the emergence of the modern nation state, the agency of Romanies, the nature of archives and the methological implications of writing history of groups that have left few egodocuments behind.

The empirical focus of this project lies in three areas of inquiry that are or can be crucial to people’s welfare: the possibility of crossing different kinds of borders legally, the possibility of legal settlement and the possibility of making a legal livelihood. Mini-biographies will be constructed mainly around three women, based on the sporadic, scattered glimpses that are left of them in the archives. Drawing from a multitude of sources, combining qualitative and quantitative data, the lives of these women will be used as hubs in order to explore the position and experience of Romani people in Sweden as well as the emergence of the modern nation state. The main aim is twofold: to problematize different historical as well as historiographical silences, and to broaden and deepen our understanding of the long history of Romani people in the Nordic countries.

The ‘Civilised’ Nature of European Warfare?

Project leader: Michelle Gordon
Funding: The Hugo Valentin Centre (postdoc project)
Research focus: Genocide studies and Colonial Warfare
Project start: August 2018

It has been commonly accepted that nineteenth-century warfare was predicated on notions of ‘civilised’ (i.e. European) and ‘uncivilised’ warfare against indigenous ‘savages’. As a result, there are two distinct bodies of work on colonial and European warfare and the relationship between the two has been hitherto under researched. Nineteenth-century intra-European and colonial violence took place in the context of the nationalisation, industrialisation and ‘totalisation’ of warfare. Simultaneously, international standards of warfare were being set – in a European context at least – to standardise and ‘humanise’ practices of war, although noncombatants were left unprotected under international law. Both types of warfare had a devastating effect on local civilian populations.

This project will reassess the role of European troops in committing extreme violence and atrocities in intra-European and colonial conflicts in nineteenth-century warfare. My research will explore networks and ‘transfers’ of knowledge between the metropole and the periphery, considering the ways in which European powers ‘learnt’ new methods of violence both within and between empires. Empirical evidence from a range of archives will be investigated to demonstrate how Europeans – and military men in particular – were thinking comparatively in the tactics they used both in and outside of Europe. This project will explore the ways in which the perception of one’s enemy radicalised the methods used, including concepts of ‘race’ and ‘illegitimacy’. By examining how methods and mentalities of extreme violence were transferred across and beyond empires, this research will contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how European colonial practices ‘came home’ in the genocidal intra-European violence of the twentieth century.

The Role of Couriers in Spreading Awareness of Mass Murder and Establishing Jewish Resistance Movements During the Second World War

Project leader: Sylwia Szymańska-Smolkin
Funding: The Hugo Valentin Centre
Research focus: Holocaust studies
Project start: August 2018

Despite the enclosure of Jews into ghettos in occupied Poland (General Government), the Germans failed to completely cut them off from the outside world. The ghettos were isolated from each other and leaving them was possible only in exceptional cases; however, ghetto inhabitants maintained ties with the “Aryan” side and with other ghettos. Underground organizations and political parties in different ghettos worked independently but tried to establish contacts with organizations in other ghettos. The success of the exchange of information between the ghettos was due to the work of couriers who travelled between ghettos in the General Government and then to areas occupied by the Germans in 1941.

The project will examine the work of couriers and their role in establishing contact between communities to determine how the information about mass killings in the East was disseminated and received. It will discuss how the work of couriers contributed to raising awareness of German plans to murder Jews and aim to help understand the impact the information about mass killings from Vilna had on political organizations in the Białystok and Warsaw ghettos. The project will broaden the discussion on the Jewish resistance movement and show how both female and male couriers contributed to the efforts of creating resistance organizations in ghettos. How were they received in the communities they reached? Were the urges to organize armed resistance modeled on the Jewish resistance organization FPO (Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye) in Vilna understood and heeded? The three ghettos that will be examined in more detail were each in a separate German administrative zone: Vilna (Reichskommissariat Ostland), Warsaw (General Government), and Białystok (Bezirk Bialystok).

Racism and Neo-hereditarian Individualism: Discursive Transformations and Minority Formation in Post-Second World War US Public Schools

Project leader: Jim Porter
Funding: Hugo Valentin-centrum (postdoc-project)
Research focus: Minority studies and ethnic relations
Project start: August 2017

This project examines how discourses about alleged hereditary individual difference structured educational opportunity in the post-Second World War United States. Specifically, it examines how a refashioned science of “intelligence" was quietly integrated into educational policy following Brown v. Board’s mandate to desegregate US public schools.

A number of social scientists had already during the interwar period provided well-substantiated criticism against intelligence tests for being methodologically flawed, even an extension of 19th century race science. Yet post-Second World War advocates of testing and “ability” grouping found new ways to justify old practices. This research will trace the discursive adaptation of hereditarianism across interwar and post-WWII eras, exploring continuities as it does so between an earlier race science and eugenics movement, and a mid to late-1950s push for the selective education of the “gifted” and “academically talented.” To this end, the project will examine the rise in the 1950s of neo-hereditarian individualism, and yet the entanglement of this individualism with a racism from which it had supposedly freed itself.

The New Speakers of Wymysorys: The Reconstitution of the Local Language and Sociolinguistic Identity in Wilamowice, Poland

Project leader: Robert Borges
Funding: The Hugo Valentin Centre (postdoc project)
Research focus: Minority studies and ethnic relations
Project start: July 2017

From around the 13th century until the end of the Second World War, a Germanic language called Wymysorys was the language of everyday communication in the town of Wilamowice, southern Poland. Due to post-war repressive policies, intergenerational transmission of Wymysorys was stifled, and the language is today considered "nearly extinct" by UNESCO. But in the past ten or so years, grassroots revitalization efforts have resulted in the emergence of several dozen fluent young users of the language and several dozen more dedicated learners.

The main aim of the project is to document the profiles of the new speakers of Wymysorys in terms of their attitudes and experiences about the language and mulitlingualism as well as the manner in which these speakers actually use the language. Drawing on insights from socio-, experimental, and contact linguistics, a mixed method analysis can be performed on these profiles in order to address a number of questions. How do factors such as attitudes, collective identity and trauma, proficiency, and language structure influence each other? How are linguistic innovations introduced and spread in the speech community. In addition to its narrow focus, the project has potential for wider theoretical contributions in terms of foregrounding new speakers in an empirically-based approach (variationist paradigm) as well as the study of language revitalization in general.

Yizkor Books: An Underresearched Part of Holocaust Memory Culture

Project leader: Lior Becker
Funding: HVC and Dept. of History (PhD project)
Research focus: Holocaust memory culture
Project start: January 2017

The project concerns an underresearched part of the Holocaust memory culture; Yizkor books. These works began appearing during the Holocaust, but mainly in the decades after the war with a peak in the 1970s. The books represent a spontaneous attempt among Holocaust survivors, mostly in the United States and Israel, to remember and pay attention to the culturally and spiritually rich world that existed in Europe before the Nazi genocide.

Writing of Yizkor books can be seen as positive reaction to the Nazi attempt to not only physically exterminate the Jews, but to also delete them from the collective memory. They represent not only a recollection, saying that "we were here", but provide a vivid insight into the Jewish society before, during and after the Holocaust. About two thousand books have been published over the years, mostly in Hebrew, Yiddish and English. The project aims at a first depth analysis of these works as historical documents, literary works, and as an important part of the Holocaust and the Jewish people's cultural memory.

”Stand Up and Walk!” Minorities and Migrants in the Social Work of the Swedish Church, ca. 1900-1940

Project leader: Ida Ohlsson al Fakir
Funding: The Hugo Valentin Centre (postdoc project)
Research focus: minorities and migration
Project start: September 2016

The research project analyses the Swedish church’s problematisations and practices concerning minorities and migrants in or at the borders to the nation state in the beginning of the twentieth century. The Swedish church has for centuries been an important actor in social work at the local level, and from the late 19th century part of this work was aimed at minorities and migrants.

The project examines which groups different diaconal or missionary activities targeted and how these activities differed depending on whether the target group was defined as a legitimate recipient or not. The purpose is to create new knowledge about the relation between the Swedish church and minority groups such as Roma and Resande (travellers), as well as other groups whose mobility has been defined as a problem at local, national and international levels. These are questions in which the Swedish church today has established itself as an important actor. By broadening the focus from separate (national) minorities to migrants, the study will create a deeper understanding of the role of different ideas and actors in processes of belonging.

Confronting Intercultural Conflicts: French Antiracism and Jewish-Muslim Relations, 1948-2000

Project leader: Johannes Heuman
Funding: Swedish Research Council
Research focus: Ethnic relations and minority studies
Project start: June 2015

After the Second World War, France’s Jewish and Muslim communities grew to become the most vital in Western Europe. Yet the relationship between these two communities has been tense due to political developments beyond France’s current borders. The foundation of Israel with its subsequent conflicts and the decolonisation of North Africa in the 1950s and 1960s were two key political developments which together significantly shaped Jewish–Muslim relations.

The purpose of the project is to understand to what extent the French antiracist movement, with its universal orientation, left room for the specific interests of France ́s Jewish and Muslim communities, but in some cases also contributed to the polarisation by public various manifestations and public statements. The project will draw on recent research on multiculturalism, identity politics, and universalism, and in this way provide a deeper understanding of Jewish–Muslims relations changed during the post-war era and how the antiracist movement dealt with the rise of identity politics within those communities. The project is conducted at the Hugo Valentin Centre and the Centre Alberto-Benveniste, part of the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris.