Bo Stråth (born 1943) is a professor emeritus. He was the 2007-2014 Academy of Finland Distinguished Professor in Nordic, European and World History and Director of Research at the University of Helsinki. From 1997-2007 he was Professor of contemporary history at the European University Institute, Florence and from 1991-1996 Professor of History at Göteborgs Universitet. 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 (STIAS) and University of Barcelona. He has been a member of the International Committee for Social History and a member of several selection committees, advisory boards, evaluation panels, and editorial boards.
Details as to curriculum and research
Under the assumption that domestic and European components constitute national identities, the aim of the project was to analyse and compare the combination of national-cum-European
components in national identities and representations of Europe and the EU with a special reference to the role of the media in their (trans)formation.
The object of the interdisciplinary project at the outset was to foster a deeper understanding of why basically similar processes of modernisation have resulted in different problem resolutions. The question of governability and social cohesion and division studied through an analytical focus on language and culture was at the centre of the project.
Development paths are constructed by
historians when they in retrospect, analyse what has happened. Cultural and historical heritages play a role but in what direction they affect actions is an open question. With a focus on politics and practices of immigration, the project explored the role of culture and traditions in the meeting with the immigrats, comparing how four national administrations developed practices in response to the same problem and the same rule-setting framework.
At border checkpoints, political and military power merge and the state monopoly of violence is made evident to those who intend to pass and those just standing by. There, the territory is demarcated, and this demarcation is enforced; enlightenment ideas of universal freedom and equality are shattered, and there is little rational justification for why the jurisdiction of one state should end and another begin. Why not one or twenty meters to the right or left? The seminar series at EUI 2001-2002 organized by James Kaye, Willfried Spohn, Bo Stråth and Anna Triandafyllidou was a forum for the EU framework programme projects IAPASIS and EURONAT.
Here are seminars at the EUI 2001-2005 within the working group The Economy as a Polity established by Christian Joerges, Bo Stråth and Peter Wagner and the research project Modernity of Europe directed by Stråth and Wagner.
Here three conferences 1999-2001 about media and history. The conferences discussed among others the impact of digital and visual technologies on the preconditions of academic history writing and the possibilities of representation.
These two workshops in 2001 discussed the tension between state sovereignty and the image of a universal order transcending state borders that has been a constant of international relations in Europe, oscillating between peace and war. They also reflected on the legitimacy of military interventions in the name of an international community whose future legal status and structures are still indeterminate.
Here are six conferences and workshops 1996-2001 on time in history writing. They investigate the connections between the past, the future, and the present, and between continuities and discontinuities in the exploration and explanation of history.
This project studied the dissolution of the full employment convention in the 1990s. The approach was centred on the conceptual and interpretive adjustment of societies in Europe to the dramatic structural changes taking place in the labour market since the 1970s. Questions dealt with how the historical and cultural heritage of the full employment convention has played in different national settings. Additionally, the redefinition of the obligations of the state, employer organisations and trade unions were examined.
This project explored the plan for a European Monetary Union, the Werner Plan, around 1970s. It discussed the backdrop of the launch of the plan and why it finally failed.
