Research programmes and networks previously supported by Circus.
Research programmes and networks previously supported by Circus.
Aquifers in the Anthropocene
Groundwater is largely invisible and subsequently unpredictable. How does this particular condition affect experts, political decision-makers and citizens? How does it shape regulations, conventions, and agreements, forge social practices, and produce conflicts as well as cooperation? By creating an interdisciplinary research network consisting of senior and junior scholars in Cultural Anthropology, Law, and Peace and Conflict Research, the network aimed at establishing a new frontline research area within the Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences at Uppsala University. The network sought to provide state of the art references and turn aquifers (a body of rock which can contain or transmit groundwater) into a public object of concern for decision-makers and society at large, thereby supporting the sustainable and cooperative global use of groundwater.
Network leader: Susann Baez Ullberg, Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
Housing as a Right
Housing as a Right received support from CIRCUS between 2019-2020. The network gathers researchers from the Centre for Social Work (CESAR), the Institute for Housing and Urban Research (IBF) and the Real Estate Research Institute (IFF) to investigate the intersection of legal and social housing policy issues.
Network leader: Emma Holmqvist, Institute for Housing and Urban Research (IBF)
The Digital City
During the last decade, our society has undergone a transformation from analogue to digital. This transition has generated vast amounts of data describing things such as travel patterns, where and when we shop, make phone calls, etc. These data flows are often referred to as Big Data and are commonly used to measure societal performance. But Big Data alone cannot help us to answer society's central questions about e.g. sustainability, segregation and health. Instead, focus must be directed on mixing methods and approaches so that different datasets can be combined to progress knowledge. This research group brought researchers together from a wide range of fields and backgrounds. The aim of the network was to allow a diversity of researchers to develop new collaborations on the basis of what the different groups' expertise had to offer.
Network leader: John Östh, Department of Social and Economic Geography,
Ecological Narratives: Bio/Cyber/Semiotic Perspectives
Ecological Narratives received support from CIRCUS between 2019-2020. The network brought together researchers from English, Cultural Geography, Gender Studies and Modern Languages to investigate diverse ecologies of signs and how these signs develop into narratives. Building on the interdisciplinary field of biosemiotics, the research network will developed a theoretical framework (cyber/bio/semiotics) that includes signifying and meaning-making practices in nonhuman lifeforms and computational media as well as human practices.
Network leader: N. Katherine Hayles, Guest Professor at the English Department (2018-2020)
Exploring Rules and Principles in Citizenship: New challenges in the Wake of Migration, Populism and Increasing Global Interdependence
The purpose of the research programme Exploring Citizenship, which had support from CIRCUS between 2017-2019, was to create an integrative interdisciplinary research environment to investigate citizenship and democracy. Increasing globalisation and mobility create complexity when civil rights tend to be linked to citizenship in a specific country. The network gathered researchers from Philosophy, Law and Political Science.
Network leader: Patricia Mindus, Department of Philosophy,
FAL: Fieldwork in Anthropology and Linguistics
The world hosts an immense diversity of cultures as well as languages, the bulk of which are rapidly disappearing in the globalised world. Hence, it is a matter of urgency that they be documented before they will are lost forever. The idea for this network was to bring together researchers primarily anthropologists and linguists – for whom fieldwork is a fundamental component of their research. Descriptive fieldwork as a method needs to be done efficiently, ethically and dynamically in order to respond to a changing world, especially considering technological developments and the COVID pandemic. The network aimed to enable scholars from different disciplines to share experiences of fieldwork in a systematic way.
Network leader: Harald Hammarström, Department of Linguistics and Philology,
Finding High-Level Image Content through AI Pre-Training with Contrastive Language-Image Pairs
Modern online search engines are good at finding images that depict something tangible, such as for example an apple. But the search engines are not so good at finding out what the images are really about – the apple could mean Newton's apple, which is said to have inspired him to discover the law of gravity. The network gathered researchers from art history, information technology and linguistics to develop better search engines, which not only find out what the images show, but also what they are about. Through a newly developed method called CLIP, you can, through machine learning and artificial intelligence, train, neural networks directly on data in the form of raw text and massive amounts of images that is, already texted images. CLIP is based on 400 million images from the web that are linked with their respective captions. The method allows a neural network itself to figure out what is what in the image. The network aimed to improve the CLIP system through richer and more specialised descriptions.
Network leader: Jan von Bonsdorff, Department of Art History,
Research Network on Digital Politics
The digitalisation of society the integration of social media platforms, blockchain technologies and AI-based systems has vast implications for political life. It shapes election campaigns, public opinion, and how people participate in politics. More subtly, it introduces new elites, new resources in the form of data, and autonomous technological actors. Such developments raise important questions that hinge on the (re)distribution of political, social and economic power in the digital age. The Research Network on Digital Politics gathered researchers from political science, linguistics, law, information technology and media and communication studies to discuss issues that pertain to how digitalisation shapes and is shaped by political practice and the distribution of power, as well as the values that come into play through attempts to govern, regulate and organise such processes.
Network leader: Alexandra Segerberg, Department of Government,
From close reading to remote reading: digital humanities and new forms of text analysis
The research programme From Close Reading to Remote Reading received support from CIRCUS between 2017-2019. The research programme lays the foundation for infrastructure for computer-aided text analysis of Swedish texts. Computer-aided text analysis is a relatively new field of research that gives researchers great opportunities to analyse large volumes of text in order to find semantic, linguistic and thematic patterns.
Network leader: Johan Svedjedal, Department of Literature,
HERO – Higher Education as Object of Study
Given the enormous expansion of higher education in recent decades and its increasing strategic significance in society, it is surprising that relatively little research has been conducted in this field in Sweden. HERO investigated questions regarding the organisation and governance of education, its social structures, and the foundations of the university as an idea. The network gathered researchers from Political Science, Business Studies, Education Studies, History of Ideas, and Philosophy. The network was twice been awarded support from CIRCUS between 2017-2020. Since 2021, HERO is its own research centre, Higher Education and Research as Objects of Study (HERO).
Network leader 2017-2019: Mikael Börjesson, Department of Education
Network leader 2019-2020: Linda Wedlin, Department of Business Studies,
Historical Study of National Christianities
The image of Sweden as the Social Democratic middle way during the twentieth century is often pictured as a secular project. Welfare, future optimism, and solid housing meant a contrast to an old age characterised by poverty, oppression and religion. But in Sweden, Christianity never departed from modernity. New political forces and social strata wanted Christianity to be conveyed in new ways where ethics, solidarity and idealism would replace Luther´s small catechism. During the 1920s, primary school teachers gained power with a Christianity which was liberal, democratically aimed, and based upon Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. The primary school functioned as a church for this other Christianity. This interdisciplinary network investigated this surprisingly unexplored religion as an expression of an attempt to create a Swedish national value base, and compared with similar projects internationally.
Network leader: Urban Claesson, Department of Theology,
Human Diversity Research Network
The research network Human Diversity received support from CIRCUS between 2017-2019. The network gathered researchers from Linguistics, Archaeology, Gender Studies and Genetics to study human diversity as linguistic, cultural and biological expressions.
Network leaders: Michael Dunn, Department of Linguistics and Philology, Gabriele Griffin, Center from Gender Research, Mattias Jakobsson, Department of Organismal Biology, Paul Lane, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Neil Price, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History
Inner Strength
Mental illness is a growing problem in society. Creating interventions to enhance the inner strength of particularly vulnerable groups, and thus enable reversal of a negative development, can prevent chronic illness. The network Inner Strength gathered researchers from psychology, philosophy, sociology, pedagogy, literature studies and theology, who worked together with relevant social actors to create a common infrastructure and knowledge bank, as well as develop methods and theories for such interventions. The network’s activities aimed to help alleviate the collective burden of exclusion and psychosocial vulnerability, and improve people’s opportunities to develop their well-bring and realise their potential, for their own as well as for the common good.
Network leader: Taeda Tomic, Department of Philosophy
Justice, Sustainability and Arctic Futures
The Arctic region is right now experiencing large geopolitical shifts and climatic change. How can the response to these challenges be made in a just and fair way? Arctic Futures gathered researchers to investigate the pre-conditions for creating sustainable development in the Arctic by researching aspects of justice in global climate initiatives and economic expansions currently under way. By looking at how different ethical systems can be part of regional and national governance and political goals, the project aimed to develop theoretical models for how to safe-guard equality and justice in future sustainability initiatives. The network gathered researchers from International Relations, Geography, Theology, Anthropology, Social Science and Business Studies.
Network leader: Corine Wood-Donnelly, Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies
Heritage Transformations
Heritage is a phenomenon in perpetual movement and under constant negotiation. Heritage Transformations explores how these processes can be understood from a multidisciplinary perspective. The network gathered researchers from an array of different academic disciplines, such as gender studies, archaeology, cultural geography, law, history of ideas, linguistics and musicology. The goal was to strengthen the conversation about heritage at Uppsala University as well as to contribute to the national and international discussion with new theoretical and methodological perspectives. The participants worked on a manifesto and an edited volume. In order to reach a larger audience, the network also produced a series of podcasts.
Network leader: Cecilia Rodéhn, Centre for Gender Research
Listen to PodCast How to Heritage
Cultural Heritage and Ethics in Peace and Conflict
The research network Cultural Heritage and Ethics in Peace and Conflict had support from CIRCUS between 2019-2020. The network gathered researchers from Law, Philosophy, Art History and Peace and Conflict Studies to investigate factors that affect the protection of heritage property and how these factors in turn influence peace-keeping missions and re-building after conflicts.
Network leader: Elisabeth Schellekens Dammann, Department of Philosophy
Leadership, effectiveness and the constitutional state in peace-time crises
The COVID-19 pandemic has raised issues regarding the resilience of Swedish governmental institutions in the face of peacetime crises, as well as the constitutional and legal frameworks for crisis preparedness and management in Sweden. Despite numerous government committees investigating crisis issues in recent decades, following a number of incidents, genuine reform of the Swedish crisis management system has not come to pass. In addition to this, there is a research deficit regarding crisis management in Sweden, especially regarding the constitutional and administrative frameworks. The purpose of this network was to promote interdisciplinary research on Swedish crisis management and preparedness and how they might be reformed.
Network leader: Olof Wilske, Department of Law
Migration as a Legal and Political Process
Migration is one of the major social challenges of our time and decision makers need a solid knowledge base in order to meet these challenges. The network Migration as a Legal and Political Process, brought together researchers from different disciplines who approach the legal and political dimensions of migration in a number of ways. Traditional migration research has often started from the notion of migration as movement in space, over borders. But where a person is located geographically may not necessarily be decisive for his or her migration status. Therefore, the project aimed to study migration as a movement in time, that is as a temporal process. Time as in a person’s age and time spent at a particular location may play an important role in the identification of who is counted as a migrant, as well as where, how and why this is the case. The network gathered researchers from Law, History, Philosophy, Social Science and Theology.
Network leader: Rebecca Thorburn Stern, Department of Law
Nature as Culture: The (Re)production of Common Sense (NaC)
The multidisciplinary network Nature as Culture: The (Re)production of Common Sense (NaC) investigated first, how the concepts of nature and culture figure and are articulated in various disciplinary contexts and secondly, how these concepts, frequently through being taken as common sense, feature in establishing truth claims within different scientific cultural formations.
Network leader: Ulrika Dahl, Center from Gender Research,
Racism and Discrimination in Swedish Schools
Despite the democratic mission that guides the Swedish school system, studies show that racism and discrimination are part of everyday life at Swedish schools, from preschool to upper secondary school. Studies also show that school staff lack knowledge of racism and discrimination and that there are big and important differences between schools with respect to their work to promote equality and combat racism and discrimination. The network Racism and Discrimination in Swedish Schools gathered researchers from sociology, political science, educational sciences, and child and youth studies, to coordinate the collective expertise on racism and discrimination in schools in Sweden. Through interdisciplinary interaction, the network aimed to provide a systematic view of the scope, expressions, causes, and consequences of racism and discrimination within the Swedish school system.
Network leaders: Claes Tängh Wrangel, Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism and Hassan Sharif, Department of Education
Project in DiVA
Studies on Education, Migration and Segregation (EMS)
Sweden is witnessing an increase in ethnic and socio-economic segregation, both in terms of housing and in education. The negative effects of these two segregation processes primarily impact socially and economically disadvantaged groups. One group that has increasing difficulty in asserting itself on the housing market and on the educational market consists of largely of individuals with a foreign background, i.e. people who are born in another country or whose parents have migrated to Sweden. EMS gathered researchers from Sociology of Education and Culture, Housing and Urban Research, and Social and Economic Geography to study the social, spatial and societal effects relating to education, migration and segregation.
Network leader: Håkan Forsberg, Department of Education,
TextWorlds: Global Mapping of Texts From the Pre-Modern World
From Egyptian hieroglyphic papyri and Babylonian cuneiform tablets to Inca quipu knots, Chinese oracle bones, and Viking rune stones - texts from the pre-modern world form a critical basis for our knowledge of the past. But how do these bodies of historical source material compare? How many are there? And where do they come from? TextWorlds brought together scholars from Assyriology, Latin, Turkic, Old Norse, History, Archaeology and Digital Humanities to explore text corpora of the pre-modern world in a comparative perspective.
Network leader: Rune Rattenborg, Department of Linguistics and Philology,
The Interdisciplinary Island and Seascape Research Cluster
There are around 600 million islands in the world. Despite the fact that they make up a small percentage of the total land mass, they have played a significant role in the history of humanity. How can we face tomorrow’s challenges by studying islands and seascapes from a long-term perspective? In this project, researchers gathered around questions of how climate change impacts eco systems, how life is shaped by the particular dispositions of islands and seascapes, and how these spaces are used by local inhabitants and external stakeholders as heritage sites, as tourist destinations, and as scientific laboratories. The network included researchers from Archaeology, Heritage Studies, Anthropology, Ethnology, Management, Physics, History, Sociology, Geoscience and Engineering Science.
Network leader: Helene Martinsson-Wallin, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Archaeology
The Role of Commensality in the Present and the Past: implications for policy and planning
The research network The Role of Commensality in the Present and the Past received support from CIRCUS between 2017-2019. The research network aimed to further understanding of meals from a sociological, historical and theological perspective and how meals shared with others affect us and how this knowledge can be converted into practical social innovations and guidelines for e.g. construction, city planning and meal planning for elderly people.
Network leader: Agneta Yngve, Department of Food Studies, Nutrition and Dietetics,
Uppsala Human Rights Research Network
Human rights is a cross-cutting research field that explores issues ranging from political and philosophical perspectives on how we can understand “rights” as a concept and how rights are legally regulated, to how rights are applied and (can be) practiced in different parts of the world. It also investigates theoretical and practical consequences for the living conditions of those who are, or are not, considered as rights holders. The Uppsala Human Rights Research Network gathered researchers from law, theology and political science with the aim of highlighting existing research on human rights at Uppsala University and creating conditions for new research, both through grant applications and through applied analyses.
Network leader: Anna-Sara Lind, Department of Law
Anxiety – an interdisciplinary research network
Anxiety is a human emotion that in psychology is usually defined as the experience of fear of an imagined, but not present, threat. Anxiety is understood as a cultural expression and driving force on an individual and political level, as an aspect of religious and existential experience, and as an object shaping and being shaped by historical and societal contexts. The purpose of this network was to create a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration, where researchers from different disciplines could meet, exchange perspectives, and develop new forms of collaboration. Through dialogue and exchange, the network sought to deepen the understanding of a multifaceted phenomenon with broad scientific and societal significance.
Network leader: Malin Gingnell, Department of Psychology, Emotion Psychology,