Speakers

”The concept of the Nordic—as both a material and a phantasmatic construction—revolves perhaps primarily around bordering practices and border-crossings. It is a way of organizing space and determining who ”belongs” and who does not, who will have access and who is excluded, and who may be allowed in but will always be treated as a ”stranger”, and this can often mean the difference between life and death, crucial for how the lives lived here (or denied the chance to live here) will unfold, and what traces they will leave for future generations.”

Jenny Gunnarsson Payne holds the Baltic Sea Professorship in Ethnology at Södertörn University. Her research focuses mainly on cultural and political aspects of gender, reproduction, sexuality, and kinship. She currently leads the projects ”Navigating Anti-LGBTQ Politics and Homonationalism,” which explores precarity and social support structures among queer migrants, and ”Unexpected Genealogies?” which investigates kinship, identity, and memory in contemporary genealogy, drawing on, among other things a qualitative questionnaire in collaboration with Nordiska museet (‘the Nordic Museum’).

”As the Nordic region undergoes rapid socio-cultural and technological shifts alongside global challenges, responses range from reactionary to cautiously hopeful. To me, ’Nordic 2.0’ urges us to reexamine traditional practices – whether scholarly or non-academic – through contemporary lenses, challenging us to expand our assumptions of nordicity in a conflicted world.”

Antti Lindfors, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, Department of Cultures. Situated at the borderlands between folklore/cultural studies and linguistic anthropology, his research spans a range of topics, from stand-up comedy to cold exposure and the scientific reframing of alternative medicine within the emerging framework of ’biohacking.’ His most recent work focuses on therapeutic polarization and the contemporary onto-politics of contested/functional disorders.

Mark Vacher is an associate professor at the SAXO Institute, dept. of Ethnology, Copenhagen University, where he is responsible for the international Master of Applied Cultural Analysis program (MACA). Through his development of the MACA program, he is collaborating with broad range of Danish and international companies. Since 2019, he has headed the HumanImpact project at Copenhagen University aiming at developing the collaboration between universities, researchers, and Danish companies.

”We are in the midst of yet another pivotal technological shift. Again. Now it is AI and a range of digital technologies that are gradually becoming integrated into our lives. The process moves from hype and heated debates to becoming woven into the mostly invisible fabric of daily routines, thought patterns, and practices. To understand this, we need not only new knowledge but also new ways of imagining how we live with technology.”

Robert Willim is an Associate Professor of Ethnology and a Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures at Lund University. He is also active as an artist. This positions his work at the intersection of art and cultural analytical research. He has extended his research through electronic music, video essays, and installations. In recent years, he has used the concept of Mundania to explore and illustrate how emerging technologies intertwine with people’s everyday lives and imaginations.

”Ethnology and folkloristics challenge boundaries and study contemporary society from micro to macro perspectives with a keen historical awareness—an ideal foundation for looking forward and exploring Norden 2.0!”

Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch is an Adjunct Professor [Title of Docent] in Nordic Folkloristics at Åbo Akademi University and an archivist at the Language and Tradition Collection at the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland. Mobility, especially everyday movement patterns such as walking, has long been a favourite theme for her research and publications. International collaboration, not least Nordic, is an integral part of ethnology and folkloristics and something close to her heart.