Meet the Coordination-team of Uppsala University’s Forum for Africa Studies

One of the open positions is in ethnology, the other two in anthropology within the department's two research environments Engaging Vulnerability and Uppsala University´s Forum for African Studies. Postdoctoral positions are mainly aimed at researchers who received their PhD less than three years ago. We are looking forward to your application by November 30th!

The Symposium is jointly organized by Uppsala University’s Forum for Africa Studies and Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s Sahel and West Africa Programme; 14-15 December 2023.

Cultural anthropologist Ulrika Trovalla has previously researched how people interact with infrastructure in the Nigerian city of Jos. Ulrika has now been granted research funding from Formas for a project on Swedish electricity as infrastructure for forecasting. The project is based on the situation when Swedish electricity prices sharply increased in the winter of 2022, and how it affected people's use of and thoughts about electricity.

FORTE, the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare, has granted research funding for ethnologist Göran Nygren's study on the school situation for students with congenital movement disorders. The project will be carried out during the period 2024-2026. Göran Nygren recently defended his doctoral thesis at the department with an acclaimed dissertation on parents' influence on their children's school results.

In the beginning of October, the department’s two PhD candidates Metztli Sarai Hernández Garcia and Matias Menalled, together with senior lecture Susann Baez Ullberg, participated in the C-Urge network’s kick-off event hosted by KU Leuven in Belgium. C-Urge stands for Anthropology of Global Climate Urgency and is a Marie Skłodowska–Curie Actions Doctoral Network focusing on how the social sciences can contribute to our understanding of and engagement with climate change by attending to the notion of 'urgency' itself. 

The Swedish Energy Agency has granted new funds to the project Tools as a Service, where Katarina Graffman, UU, is responsible for studying and evaluating the project's user-friendliness. In the coming year, the service will be further developed. 

After the Ethnologists' successful 75th anniversary, it is now time for the department's other discipline to celebrate: Anthropology turns 60! 

In addition to a packed anniversary day at the Humanities Theatre on October 20, there will be a full week of events between October 16-23.

Sam Kniknie will be guest PhD student with us during the autumn. Welcome!

This semester we welcome three new antrhopologists to the department! 

They are Associate Senior Lecturer Mahmoud Keshavarz, and Metztli Sarai Hernández Garcia and Matias Menalled who both are PhD students in the network C-Urge: Anthropology of Global Climate Urgency. 

This year we celebrate 75 years of ethnolgogical research and teaching at Uppsala University! To celebrate, there will be a full day symposium on September 8th at Campus English Park, with our own researchers and invited guests. What a great start of the semester!

Ana Chiritoiu, post-doctoral researcher at the department, has won the Best Dissertation Award at her alma mater the Central European University. The university has also published a longer interview with Ana about her research and fieldwork among Roma in Romania, which we highly recommend for interesting reading. Congratulations Ana!

Professor Emeritus of Ethnology Gösta Arvastson has passed away at the age of 80. Gösta started teaching at the department in 1989 and was promoted full professor eleven years later. His thoughts on the postition of ethnology in academia and society in the early 2000s contributed to the development of the discipline, both on a local level and in the national research environment. Gösta was an articulate and innovative researcher, colleague and friend, who leaves a big void behind, writes Professor Birgitta Meurling in the department's obituary. 

Katarina Graffman, affiliated cultural anthropologist at the department, is frequently participating in media and contributing important anthropological perspectives in public discussions. Recently she was part of the public service radio-show Ekonomiakuten, addressing how to change bad economic habits. 

In the middle of the summer, the Swedish government announced that they would cut all funding for development research. Many of the department's researchers have signed a national appeal against the decision. 

We are very happy to announce that from August 1st and five months onward, Inna Shvorak will be with us as a guest reseracher at the department! Inna is an ethnomusicologist and a folk singer from Ukraine, and has recieved a scholarship from Uppsala University's vice-chancellor to visit us. Click to open this news and read more about Inna and her research. 

The Forum for Africa Studies has recruited new staff for carrying out the important mission of this interdisciplinary centre. Dr. Kajsa Hallberg Adu and Dr. Jecinta Okumu are our newest colleagues who will add energy and power to Forum's mission of engaging higher education and research in, on, and with Africa. 

Katarina Graffman, anthropologist who is affiliated to the department, is discussing the future and what we can know about it, in the Swedish television show Idébyrån. 

We welcome Jecinta Okumu to the department, one of the new coordinators at Uppsala University's Forum for Africa Studies.

Former PhD student in Ethnology, Göran Nygren, concluded in his dissertation that Swedish pupils with good grades usually have well educated parents who help them a lot with schoolwork. His research has gained a lot of attention in media and public debate. A recent example is that the former minister of education, Lina Axelsson Kihlblom, refered to the dissertation in a debate article about the Swedish school grades system. 

The Department's postdoc Chakad Ojani has been selected for the prestigious Pro Futura Scientia program for promising early-career researchers. For five years, he will further develop his research on the relationship between space infrastructure, environment, and climate change.

Adelaida Caballero recently defended her dissertation successfully at the department. Now you can hear her talk about her research about female sexuality and cultural anthropology as a discipline in the Swedish podcast Ett hum om. 

Last week, the Swedish Anthropology Association SANT's annual conference is being organized at the Ethnographic Museum in Stockholm, together with Stockholm University. The conference theme this year was Care and the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology at Uppsala University was represented in many panels and roundtables.

In 2023, Forum for Africa Studies received funding from the Vice-Chancellor for a broad university-wide mandate, including all university faculties. The full-day launching event started with Vice-Chancellor Professor Anders Hagfeldt officially inaugurating Uppsala University’s Forum for Africa Studies.

April 18th, Uppsala University’s Forum for Africa Studies hosts a seminar with Professor Ludovic O. Kibora, Director of Institut des Sciences Sociétés in Burkina Faso, and Professor Sten Hagberg. They will talk about the English edition of their new book Security from below in Burkina Faso Citizen perceptions and perspectives 2023.

On April 11, we officially open the FAKTURAART exhibition. When you visit, you will find some 85 pieces displayed, and you can pick a personal and very exclusive copy of the beautiful exhibition folder. The show will run to June 16. Open weekdays 10 am to 3 pm.

Today, Adelaida Caballero handed over her doctoral thesis in cultural anthropology Shortchanged: Elderly Women Street Vendors in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea to Carolina Rediviva and then walked in the winter sun to the University Hall where she got to nail her thesis

Adelaida’s public Ph.D. defense will take place on April 21 at 13.00, at the Geijer Hall, Campus English Park, Uppsala University. Click on the News to read more and for information in Spanish. 

Professor of Cultural Anthropology and director of the Forum for Africa Studies, Sten Hagberg, is interviewed in the Swedish Research Council's magazine Curie about the future and challenges of development research.

Syrian-Swedish artist Khaled Ahmad exhibits his project Fakturaart at the department, in collaboration with the Engaging Vulnerability research program. 

In the Swedish Anthropological Association's online magazine Antroperspektiv, you can now read a new column on the importance of ethnographic methods in medical research, a theme that is both researched and taught here at the department.

My research turns towards the future as I research youth in Ghana and beyond, student migration, integration, knowledge societies, social media in the classroom, social media in African elections, uses of augmented reality, and recent publications have been on the important issue of decolonizing the academy. At the department, I teach African studies, spring 2023 two courses: A2 Africa in the 2000s and A3 African Cultural Expressions.

The application period is open for the departments summer course Ethnographic Methods in a Digitized World. The course in in Swedish and you find more inforamtion about it if you switch the webpage language into Swedish. 

A new text by Sverker Finnström is published today in the Swedish web magazine Antroperspektiv. Sverker writes about going on a kind of book-hunting field trip, the importance of taking the time to read older books of the discipline, and the unexpected stories and parallels that can emerge from a pile of books.

Mats Utas, Head of the Department, was interviewed in the magazine Universitetsläraren, after the department received an injunction from the Swedish Work Environment Authority due to shortcomings in work environment management. Mats expresses frustration that representatives from this agency only are interested in ensuring a processing structure, while they completely ignore all the actual work that the department has done.

February 16th is World Anthropology Day. The Swedish Anthropological Society (SANT) is launching its new website on the day. SANT's web magazine, Antroperspektiv, also has a new layout and new editors, Haris Agic and Uppsala-affiliated Katarina Graffman.

Today, Sten Hagberg, Professor in Cultural Anthropology and Director for the Forum for Africa Studies, writes about the Swedish research aid together with Sara Gräslund, Linley Chiwona Karltun and Gunnar Köhlin. The government has cut more than half of this year's budget. Now a quick recovery is needed.

Birgitta Meurling, Professor of Ethnology, is celebrating her 60th birthday with colleagues and friends at the department with sparkling wine and snacks on Monday afternoon. We wish Birgitta a very happy birthday!

Today, February 3rd, we congratualte Rikard Engblom for successfully defending his PhD thesis in Ethnology, called Time Warps: Refugees and the Experience of Waiting in Rural Sweden.

We warmly welcome our new PhD candidate Marcelo Pacheco to the department! Marcelos research will be on migration from the Bolovian Highlands to La Paz, and focus on psychosocial dynamics connected to climate change. 

This Friday, Jan. 13th,  PhD candidate in ethnology Rikard Engblom “nailed” his PhD thesis Time Warps – Refugees and the Experience of Waiting in Rural Sweden. The dissertation is thereby officially announced and handed over to the university library.

The public PhD defense will take place on February 3, in Geijersalen (room 6-1023), campus Engelska Parken, and begins at 9:15 a.m.

The second selection for the spring semester 2023 was completed on December 20. Remember that you who have been admitted need to accept course places to keep them. In order to then be able to start your studies you also need to register for the courses you want to take.

The Anthropologist Katarina Graffman is affailiated research at the department and is often highlighted in media for her research about consumer habits. After the New Year holiday, she has been interviewed in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, as well as in the public service radiostation P1, about how our consumption behaviors change in economic ressecion. 

Part two in the Swedish podcast Staden is released, with anthropologist Carl Rommel focusing on Cairo.

The Staff Portal hihglights the department's ethnologist Gösta Arvastson and his book about Meteorology. 

Carl Rommel in collaboration with the podcast Staden about Cairo's land, economy and housing.

We congratulate Annika Björnsdotter Teppo who has been hired as professor in cultural anthropology.