Stina Fallberg Sundmark

Senior faculty administrator at University Administration; Faculty Offices; Office for Humanities and Social Sciences

Telephone:
+46 18 471 26 86
Mobile phone:
+46 70 425 03 92
E-mail:
stina.fallberg-sundmark@uu.se
Visiting address:
Segerstedthuset, Dag Hammarskjölds väg 7
752 37 Uppsala
Postal address:
Box 256
751 05 UPPSALA

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Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor at Department of Theology; Church History and Mission History

Telephone:
+46 18 471 26 86, +46 70 425 03 92
Mobile phone:
+46 70 425 03 92
E-mail:
Stina.Fallberg-Sundmark@teol.uu.se
Visiting address:
Engelska parken, Thunbergsvägen 3 B
Postal address:
Box 511
751 20 UPPSALA

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Short presentation

Stina Fallberg Sundmark is a senior lecturer in church and mission studies, associate professor in practical theology and belongs to the subject of church history and mission history at the Department of Theology, Uppsala University. Her research concerns pastoral history and practical theological perspectives on worship, piety and church life from the perspective of the priest and the laity during the Middle Ages, the Reformation and the late 19th to early 20th centuries.

Keywords

  • worship
  • religious life
  • church life
  • the Middle Ages
  • the Reformation
  • the 19th century
  • liturgy
  • sacraments
  • church practices
  • pastoral history
  • The Salvation Army

Research

Stina Fallberg Sundmark's research deals with pastoral history and practical theological perspectives on the function and meaning of worship, piety and church life from the perspective of the priest and the laity during the Middle Ages, the Reformation period and the late 19th century to the early 20th century within various Christian traditions.

In addition to written material from different times and traditions and from varying genres such as liturgical instructions, canon law regulations, sermons, edification texts, devotional instructions, songs and magazine articles, she likes to take her starting point in visual culture such as medieval illuminations and frescoes, everyday prints from the late 19th century, photographs from the turn of the last century and material culture in the form of liturgical objects, personal belongings, prayer tools such as the medieval rosary and the modern chaplet Frälsarkransen.

Her doctoral dissertation on liturgical history and pastoral history in relation with the visitation to the sick in Swedish Medieval and Reformation Tradition (Artos 2008) deals with liturgy, theology and pious life in relation to the priest's visits to the sick and dying from the 13th century to the early 17th century. The long time perspective makes it possible to analyze breaks and continuity, that is, how practice and meaning in relation to confession, communion and last rites were allowed to survive or changed during the time period and how the Reformation in Sweden was a protracted process seen from the perspective of liturgical conditions and church life. The visitation of the sick is analyzed from the perspective of the priest and the laity with a focus on Swedish conditions and with international perspectives.

A monograph on theology for practical use on salvation-historical perspectives on the work Summula by Laurentius of Vaksala (Artos 2014, research project funded by the Swedish Research Council) takes its starting point from a Swedish handbook for priests compiled in the early 14th century. The work contains detailed instructions on how priests should live their lives and carry out their official duties and thus provides an unusually good insight into the pastoral theological conditions that applied to priests during the Swedish Middle Ages. The book examines whether and in what way the divine plan of salvation with creation, fall, redemption and man's return to paradise concerned ordinary parish priests during the Swedish Middle Ages.

Parts of Fallberg Sundmark's research are based on visual and material culture in relation to liturgy and religious life in and in relation to the medieval church space. In the research project Saints to Hold in the Hand, which was placed at the Swedish Historical Museum in 2016 and funded by the Berit Wallenberg Foundation, she analyzed religious inscriptions and iconography on personal belongings in the form of jewelry and costume details as well as utensils for meals in relation to lived religion and religious culture in everyday life.

She has also studied the Salvation Army at the turn of the century 1800/1900 and its visual culture in various home environments, women's leadership and entrepreneurship in rescue work, the movement's self-image and view of the other in relation to the Salvation Army's world exhibitions in London during the 1890s, and the meaning and function of the Salvation Army flag.

In addition, Fallberg Sundmark has analyzed the modern prayer tool, Frälsarkransen, its relationship to the second article of faith, and how verbal forms of expression in worship and religious life have in recent decades once again been accompanied by visual and material dimensions that engage the body and senses, preferably through active action.

She is part of the research networks The Historical Study of National Christianities (HNC) and the Network for Church History Analysis.

Stina Fallberg Sundmark

Publications

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