Aarhus Universitets segl

Tidligere projekter

The Invention of International Bureaucracy. The League of Nations and the Creation of International Public Administration, c. 1920-1960

Over the last 100 years, the international political scene has become increasingly organized. More than 5000 international organisations now regulate global and regional political, economic and technical affairs. As a consequence international bureaucracy, i.e. international executive bodies that function autonomously from nation states and deal with international affairs, has become an important and increasingly contested feature of world politics.

Even so, the history of these non-elected executive bodies is underresearched. This project aims to shine a light on the roots of international bureaucracy and its particular institutional and socio-cultural characteristics by exploring the principles, practices and formative effects of the League of Nations Secretariat.  With theoretical inspiration from political sociology and based on extensive multiarchival research, the project will explore the institutional norms and practices of the League Secretariat and investigate its exchanges and connections with national diplomatic and bureaucratic structures, internationalist networks and institutions and subsequent international bureaucracies of the 20th century.

Core group
- Karen Gram-Skjoldager, Associate Professor, Aarhus University
Inventing International Bureaucracy: The Creation of Bureaucratic Norms and Practices in the League Secretariat
- Haakon Ikonomou, Postdoctoral researcher, Aarhus University
International Bureaucracy and Transnational Activism: the Disarmament Section in the League of Nations Secretariat
- Torsten Kahlert, Postdoctoral researcher, Aarhus University
Inventing international Bureaucrats: Career Trajectories of British and French Secretariat Employees
- Emil Eiby Seidenfaden, PhD student, Aarhus University
Public Legitimization Strategies in the League of Nations Secretariat and their Legacies
 
Associate researchers
- Namrata R. Ganneri, SNDT College of Arts & SCB College of Commerce and Science for Women, Mumbai
Indian Civil Servants in the League Secretariat
- Michael Jonas, Lecturer, Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg
German Diplomacy in the League Secretariat
- Daniel Maul, Associate Professor, University of Oslo
The League Secretariat and the International Labour Organisation
- Øyvind Tønnesson, Associate Professor, University of Agder
The League Secretariat and the Inter-Parliamentary Union

Funding
This research is funded by a grant of 6.785.734 DKK from The Danish Council for Independent Research as part of its Sapere Aude program.

De Danske Ministerier: Dansk parlamentarisk historie 1972-1993

De danske Ministerier er en bogudgivelsesserie, der foreløbig er udkommet i fire bind dækkende dansk regerings- og parlamentarisk historie i perioden 1849 til 1972. Nu har en millionbevilling fra PFA pension gjort det muligt for en gruppe historikere tilknyttet Moderne Europa forskningsprogrammet at ajourføre værket gennem udarbejdelsen af et bd. 5, som skal dække perioden 1972-1993. Bindet får således nogenlunde samme kronologiske længde som det foregående bd. 4 skrevet af Tage Kaarsted, der behandlede perioden 1953-1972. Bindet vil i lighed med de tidligere bind blive organiseret omkring periodens forskellige regeringer med fokus på politik på både regerings- og parlamentarisk plan. Mere specifikt vil bd. 5 fokusere på de grundlæggende forandringer i rammebetingelserne for dansk parlamentarisme, der skete i tiden 1972 til 1993 forårsaget af bl.a. det nye EF-medlemskab, opløsningen af det traditionelle klassebaserede 5-parti system (eksemplificeret ved jordskredsvalget i 1973) og den ændrede socio-økonomiske debat, der opstod i overgangen fra efterkrigstidens højkonjunkturfase til en periode kendetegnet ved begreber som oliekrise, ”fattigfirsere” og nyliberalisme.

Projektdeltagere
- Professor Thorstren Borring Olesen
- Lektor Niels Wium Olesen
- Lektor Karen Gram-Skjoldager
- Studentermedhjælp Kristina Møller Andersen

Projektperiode
2014-2017

Bevillingsgiver og Budget
Samfinansiering mellem PFA Pension og AU med samlet budget på ca. 3 mill. dkk.

Shaping Childhoods Through Television: The Transfer and Demarcation of Sesame Street in 1970s’ Europe

This project is concerned with the global and local dynamics that come into play when children's media are produced for a global market and then transferred to a local setting. One particular focus is the challenges that global market products are seen to bring about, because children’s media products often are viewed as playing an important role in their enculturation into a specific cultural (national) environment. The primary way in which I approach this area of research is through an investigation of how the American produced, globally marketed, children’s television programme Sesame Street, was simultaneously appropriated and rejected by national broadcasting companies in different European countries during the 1970s. When Sesame Street came to Europe in the 1970s, it was during a period of social and cultural upheaval where European TV stations held key positions in struggles over national culture. Thus, the exploration of national broadcasters’ roles in the transfer and demarcation of Sesame Street also shows how and why norms, values and ambivalent feelings about American cultural production, especially vis-à-vis children, were negotiated in diverse cultural contexts. This makes Sesame Street's transfer history the optimal focus for an immediate, well-defined and far-reaching project about European childhood and television in the 1970s and 1980s. The project therefore contribute with insights into the differences and similarities in European notions of the role of media in children’s lives and, subsequently, children’s TV’s part in upholding and transgressing national cultures. The project includes printed, digital and audiovisual sources from archives in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Britain, Italy, the United States and Germany.

Participants
Assistant Professor, Helle Strandgaard Jensen

Duration
2014-2017

Funding
The project is financed by the Danish Council for Independent Research and FP7 Marie Curie Actions. Total budget: 3mill DKK.

Shop, consumer, city. Forbrugets produktion 1660-2015

Forskningsnetværk samlet om forbrugshistorisk forskning med by- og erhvervshistorie som omdrejningspunkter. Hensigten er at samle den danske forskning på et felt, som internationalt er i vækst og give et overblik over denne i en afsluttende publikation. Projektet foregår gennem en række seminarer frem mod 2017, og er støttet af Forskningsrådet for Kultur og Kommunikation med omkring 600.000 kr. Projektdeltagere Lektor Nina Kofoed Lektor Mikkel Thelle Museumsinspektør Kristoffer Jensen Projektperiode 2015-2017 Bevillingsgiver og Budget · Forskningsrådet for Kultur og Kommunikation med omkring 600.000 kr.

Forskningsnetværk samlet om forbrugshistorisk forskning med by- og erhvervshistorie som omdrejningspunkter. Hensigten er at samle den danske forskning på et felt, som internationalt er i vækst og give et overblik over denne i en afsluttende publikation. Projektet foregår gennem en række seminarer frem mod 2017, og er støttet af Forskningsrådet for Kultur og Kommunikation med omkring 600.000 kr.

Projektdeltagere
- Lektor Nina Kofoed
- Lektor Mikkel Thelle
- Museumsinspektør Kristoffer Jensen

Projektperiode
2015-2017

Bevillingsgiver og Budget
Forskningsrådet for Kultur og Kommunikation med omkring 600.000 kr.

‘Urban Orders’. Interdisciplinary and cross-faculty network

Internationalt forskningsprojekt mellem Aarhus, Berlin, Johannesburg og New Orleans, der undersøger urbane praksismønstre og deres forhold til styring af byudvikling. Projektet er samtidig tværdisciplinært på AU og søger at samle interesser for bystudier på AU. Projektdeltagere Lektor Morten Nielsen Lektor Mikkel Thelle Lektor Louise Fabian Projektperiode 2015-2017 Bevillingsgiver og Budget · Aarhus Universitets Forskningsfond med omkring 600.000 kr.

Internationalt forskningsprojekt mellem Aarhus, Berlin, Johannesburg og New Orleans, der undersøger urbane praksismønstre og deres forhold til styring af byudvikling. Projektet er samtidig tværdisciplinært på AU og søger at samle interesser for bystudier på AU.

Projektdeltagere
- Lektor Morten Nielsen
- Lektor Mikkel Thelle
- Lektor Louise Fabian

Projektperiode
2015-2017

Bevillingsgiver og Budget
Aarhus Universitets Forskningsfond med omkring 600.000 kr.

The children’s ‘68

The global upheaval caused by the protest movements around 1968 revolutionised social structures, overturned cultural conventions, challenged political ideologies, and catalysed civil rights activism by women, gay people and ethnic minorities. Childhood historians stress the importance of this period in altering the authority structures that shaped children’s lives. However, many of the fields within childhood studies driving these changes – children’s media and culture, children’s heritage and art education – remain pushed to the margins within historical master narratives of 1968. These disciplines have had little chance to reflect on their own development, to draw the connections stemming from their shared heritage in 1968, or to trace the historical legacies that have shaped the assumptions underpinning them.

This new collaborative project analyses 1968 as a watershed moment in children’s culture and its related disciplines, following Marwick’s (1998) now canonical definition of 1968 as the crystallisation of the cultural revolution of the ‘long sixties’ (c.1958-c.1974). A team of specialists from cognate fields within childhood studies, including children’s history and media, children’s culture, heritage and art education will pursue this objective, in dialogue with historians of 1968. This new collaboration brings together researchers and practitioners from Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden and the UK.

By thinking about children’s culture as a site for artistic and intellectual experimentation, at the centre of ideological activity across disciplinary boundaries and national borders, this project opens up new ways of understanding the 1968 liberation movements and their legacies. With the fiftieth anniversary of 1968 approaching, it is important that the children’s perspective is finally brought to the fore of scholarly debate and public commemorations.

Participants
- Jonathan Bignell, University of Reading, UK
- Cécile Boulaire, University of Tours, France
- Marie Cronqvist, University of Lund, Sweden
- Sophie Heywood, University of Reading, UK / University of Tours, France
- Helle Strandgaard Jensen, Aarhus University, Denmark
- Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, University of Tübingen, Germany
- Lucy Pearson, University of Newcastle, UK

Duration
2016-2018

Funding
Le Studium, France, approximately 500.000DKK