På tvers av grenser: Moderne historie med transnasjonale perspektiver

Kontaktperson: Ines Prodöhl

Since around 1850 transportation and communication technologies improved world-wide and made costs for travelling and shipping sink. Distances seem to shorten as telegraphs, steal steamers, and railways connected people and markets at an ever increasing speed. Through the constant movement of labour, capital, and commodities, formerly unknown economic and cultural connections grew. While we have an understanding of the rather big picture of connections and disconnections since the mid-nineteenth century, we are still missing many details. Has the world really been shrinking ever since? And what precisely was connected when? Who were the actors?

I am happy to supervise students willing to look at global economic connections such as in commodity trading for example. Future master’s theses may include, but are not limited to the following topics and questions: How did commodities such as raw materials and foods connect Scandinavia and the world? How did political conditions and global crisis like the two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Cold War, the financial crisis or the Corona virus affect trade? Which were the social impacts of what has become known as globalisation?

Students are welcome to write in either Bokmål, Nynorsk, or English.

Contact person: Sarah Hamilton

Environmental history is the study of how humans have interacted with and thought about the natural world over time. This broad field encompasses not only environmental movements and conservation but also the histories of agriculture, mining, fishing, and other extractive industries; climate histories; more-than-human histories of the associations between people, animals, plants, and elements; histories of energy production and consumption; histories of the urban and built environments; medical and technological histories; and much more.

I welcome inquiries from students interested in studying the environmental history of any time or place, and particularly those with an interest in the modern era (approximately 1800 to the present) and in transnational or transboundary work. I have broad expertise in global and transnational history, and particular experience working in the North American, Spanish, Costa Rican, and Australian contexts.

I am currently accepting only students willing to write in English. This provides an opportunity for you to work with a native English speaker to perfect your written language skills, which is of particular value to anyone planning to pursue a career in academia.

Kontaktperson: Elena Kochetkova

The Cold War is commonly treated as a period of rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States, or East and West. Recent scholarship also approaches it as a more global tension which had an all-pervasive impact on people`s lives everywhere. Importantly, the Cold War is not a merely chronological context, but an epistemological framework and a phenomenon essential for interpreting postwar history which acquires quite a significant topicality today. It is crucial, for example, for comprehending how the Cold War economic embargo is similar to today`s economic sanctions between East and West and how people interact cross the Iron Curtain. 

Overcoming the dominant understanding of the Cold War as exclusively a political rivalry of two superpowers, we can discuss the significance of economic, technological and cultural developments as can be seen in the history of exchange visits, tourism cross the Iron Curtain, international fairs and exhibitions, scientific cooperation, etc. 

I welcome students interested in exploring various strands of the Cold War then and now as a phenomenon of global development. You can do research on both more traditional episodes such as the origins, major events and results of the Cold War, and more novel topics such as cultural encounters and exchange cross the Iron Curtain, technological race, economic struggle and aid to the post-colonial world, and imagining the “other”, and more. 

You can write your thesis in English or Norwegian (we will communicate in English, but the work can be written in Bokmål or Nynorsk). 

Kontaktperson: Marcus Colla

Jeg er interessert i spørsmål knyttet til tid og temporalitet, det vil si hvordan ulike nasjoner og samfunn har forstått forholdet mellom fortid og nåtid, og hvordan disse forståelsene har utviklet seg og endret seg over tiår og århundrer.

Til dette formålet har jeg forsket på bruken av historiske fortellinger i de kommunistiske regimene i Øst-Europa på 1900-tallet. Et sentralt begrep for meg er «historisk kultur», som dannes i skjæringspunktet mellom vitenskapshistorie og populærhistorie, og som også formidles i museer, på TV, i film og på andre arenaer. Jeg undersøker hvordan disse ulike representasjonene sammen kan forme og påvirke forholdet mellom fortid og nåtid.

En annen forskningsinteresse for meg er språk- og kommunikasjonshistorie. Jeg er interessert i hvordan levende språk har tjent som instrumenter for, og barrierer for, transnasjonal kommunikasjon i historien. I denne forbindelse forsker jeg for tiden på esperantobevegelsen i det tjuende århundres Europa.

Jeg veileder deg gjerne hvis du ønsker å utvikle et prosjekt som tar for seg 1) historien om diktaturer i moderne europeisk historie, 2) tidens og temporalitetens rolle i forståelsen av historie, både fortid og nåtid, eller 3) språkets og kommunikasjonens historie i moderne tid.