Bo Stråth

Professor

Bo Stråth (Curriculum Vitae) was 2007-2014 Finnish Academy Distinguished Professor in Nordic, European and World History and Director of Research at the Department of World Cultures / Centre of Nordic Studies (CENS), University of Helsinki. 1997-2007 he was Professor of Contemporary History at the European University Institute in Florence, and 1991-1996 Professor in History at the University of Gothenburg. He is a member of The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Bo Stråth’s research at the European University Institute in Florence developed the issue of modernity in Europe from a comparative perspective. The European integration project was viewed in a longer historical and larger global framework. The question of contradictions and varieties of modernity, multiple and entangled modernities, was central to this approach, emphasizing modernities ‒ and histories ‒ in the plural. The key question was what keeps societies together and what divides and splits them. The research in Helsinki continued along these lines. Still, it broadened the European focus to a global one, and the interest in Europe concentrated on the nineteenth century as a way to better understand not only the catastrophes of the twentieth century but also our own time. Details

About the homepage

Once upon a time, this was the first and only individual professorial homepage on the website of the European University Institute. The Institute’s first webmaster Sieglinde Schreiner asked Bo Stråth to create it as a test case, and they began the experiment together....
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Curriculum vitae

Bo Stråth (born 1943) was 2007-2014 Academy of Finland Distinguished Professor in Nordic, European and World History and Director of Research at the University of Helsinki. 1997-2007 he was professor of contemporary history at the European University Institute, Florence and 1991-1996 professor of history at Göteborgs University. Member of The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Visiting fellow/professor at Universität Kiel and Glasgow University (Alexander von Humboldt Fellow), the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the Collegium for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (SCASSS) in Uppsala and at Aarhus universitet, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Universität Bielefeld, Saitama Daigaku, Tokyo Daigaku (Todai, Japan Foundation Fellow), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Universität in Frankfurt am Main, Lunds universitet, Stockholms universitet (SCORE), Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Studies and University of Barcelona. He has been a member of the International Committeee for Social History and member of several selection committees, advisory boards and editorial boards. He was a member of the board of Riksbankens Jubileumsfond RJ (2014-2018) and chair of its panel on the history disciplines.

Details as to curriculum, research and teaching (PhD researchers and research collaborators)

Research projects, Curriculum vitae

Conceptual History and Global Translations

An experiended need for new world history, an alternative to the globalization narrative, was behind the initiation of this project in 2008. An alternative with a focus on how we conceptualize cohabitation on Earth, realizing that humans are not the only inhabitants, as opposed to the story about the transportation of commodities on a world market without borders where human labour, too, became commodities. This experienced need for a new conceptualization in 2008 has since then gained profile and precision in the argument for a planetary perspective on cohabitation on Earth.

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Curriculum vitae

Concluded projects

2009-2013 Between Restoration and   Revolution, National Constitutions and Global Law: an Alternative View   on the European Century 1815-1914 (EReRe) Conceptual History and Global Translations: The Euro-Asian and African Semantics of the Social...

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Seminars and Discussion Groups, Curriculum vitae

Helsinki Research Seminars: The Past and the Future: Europe’s Ordering the World and Towards a Planetary Perspective for the World.

Here are listed the seminars and workshops from the autumn of 2007 to the end of 2008 at the Helsinki University that prepared the two projects Europe 1815-1914: Creating Community and Ordering the World and Conceptual History and Global Translations. The seminars and the projects dealt with fact-finding missions into the past with normative questions about the future in the back of the mind, questions about a better world, whatever that means. Here is also the last conclusing seminar of the Europe 1815-1914 project in 2013.

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Research projects, Curriculum vitae

European Solidarities

Perceptions of social inequality at a European level were behind the initiation of this project. An important question was whether the emergence, interpretations and regulations of social inequalities is transformed by new centre-periphery structures in the EU. The project addressed the tension in the fact that EU is an economy but not a polity, a market but not a state. The focus was on the tension that emerges when social disintegration in the wake of market integration cannot be matched by redistributive politics to adjust for inequalities however they are defined.

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Seminars and Discussion Groups, Curriculum vitae

EUI Research Seminars

To connect Bo Stråth’s research interests with those of the PhD researchers working with him at the EUI, they organized several seminar series initiated by the researchers as a joint venture. The focus was on theory and methodology questions connected to the practices of historians. There were often invited guests to broaden their intellectual input.

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Conferences, Curriculum vitae

European Modernity

Under this heading are the outlines and programmes of six conferences/workshops at the EUI between 2000 and 2006. They deal with Europe's unity and internal divisions and the role of the nation-states and their citizenships in European integration. Other teams are the connection between religion and modernity and the meaning of Europe.

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“So verglich Comenius 1623 die Tätigkeit der Historiker mit der Sicht durch Fernrohre, die posaunengleich über die Schultern nach rückwärts weisen ….”

Standortbindung und Zeitlichkeit
A Brief history of Political Economy
Monographs, Publications

A Brief history of Political Economy

Edward Elgar July 2016. Co-authored with Lars Magnusson Abstract The book examines the three historical master tales of Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek, and questions their validity and relevance in today’s moment of global disorientation which...

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Sveriges historia 1830-1920
Monographs, Publications

Sveriges historia 1830-1920

(Sweden's  History 1830-1920). Stockholm: Norstedts 2012. 712 pp Abstract The focus of the book is on the emergence of the modern mass society under intensestruggles about how to shape the future. The period between 1830 and 1920 was the timebetween two major...

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A European Memory
Anthologies, Publications

A European Memory?

Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance Abstract An examination of the role of history and memory is vital in order to better understand whythe grand design of a United Europe – with a common foreign policy and market yet enoughdiversity to allow for...

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European Solidarities
Anthologies, Publications

European Solidarities

Tensions and Contentions of a Concept Lars Magnusson and Bo Stråth (eds.), European Solidarities. Tensions and Contentions of a Concept. Brussels: PIE-Peter Lang 2007. Abstract The book discusses the tensions between a market Europe and a social Europe, between the...

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