9th Nordic Educational History Conference, 14-16 May 2025

Wherever there is education, there is power and resistance. The 9th Nordic Educational History Conference invites papers that deal with these two fundamental features of social and educational processes.

Contributions can discuss issues related to either power, resistance or both, including how they are interrelated. In terms of empirical contexts, education can be broadly understood as an activity that takes place in institutions of various forms, pre-schools, schools, universities, but also in a range of other formal and informal contexts where some kind of transmission of knowledge and values is intended to take place.

Theoretically, there are a rich variety of traditions that have discussed how patterns of domination emerge, are maintained and spread to new contexts, as well as the many ways in which they can be challenged or resisted. 

Contributions to the conference may include, but are not limited to, discussions of:

• Life in institutions 
• Professional groups
• Categorization, normality and deviance 
• The political steering of education
• Educational technology 
• Social movements, interest groups
• Revolutions
• Propaganda
• The role of different types of media 
• The role of the state and/or private companies
• War, peace, reconstruction
• Space, materiality, architecture
• Systems of inspection, evaluation and assessment

Keynote speakers: Marcelo Caruso, Humboldt university of Berlin and Stephanie Olsen, Tampere University.

Marcelo Caruso 

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Title: Resistance and subalternity: “Superstitions” and “rumours” against schooling in colonial India

Abstract

Resistance against the modern institutions of education has become one of the most interesting historiographical fields of research in the tradition of a history ‘from below’. Largely inspired by the historiography of popular cultures, particularly in early-modern Europe, (compulsory) school attendance could rightly be characterized as an expropriation of the life time of subaltern groups. Is this concept of resistance a romanticized, one-sided version of the idea of resistance? Are all subaltern equal? Put in the concepts advanced by Michel de Certeau: Are schools a ‘strategy of power’ leading to legitimate and virtuous ‘tactics’ of resistance by subaltern actors?

I will discuss these questions by looking at forms of resistance displayed in an eminently transcultural context: Colonial India in the time of high-colonialism until the partial transfer of educational governance to ‘native’ governments in 1922. First, I will focus on the idea of “superstitions” of the native populations affecting the spread and improvement of education.

Second, I will delve into a powerful means of resistance, well established in the field of cultural and political history, but not in educational historiography: rumours. Recorded instances of resistance against schools propelled by circulating rumours may give insights into practices of resistance of local communities. Certainly, both phenomena are elements of the colonial record that has to be read carefully and, sometimes, sceptically. Reading ‘superstitions’ and ‘rumours’ as acts and forms of resistance against schooling under colonial conditions may help to recast the idea of resistance beyond the binaries of the powerful and the powerless.

Stephanie Olsen

Tampere University

Title: Schoolchildren’s dreams: Complicating questions of power and resistance in school settings and in archives

Abstract

All educational systems, formal and informal, are expressions of power. What is often less apparent, at least as revealed in the archive, is resistance to that power. This is especially true when thinking about children and young people, whose own accounts are often hard to find in the historical record. This address will think through some of the ways to conceptualize these silences and rare accounts in a complex nexus of relational power and resistance among adults and young people. It will also problematize what this resistance could mean contextually, moving away from finding “agency” and young “voices,” toward more complex questions about young people’s emotions and experiences.

These theoretical and methodological questions will be explored through the unlikely source base of schoolchildren’s accounts of their dreams, collected in a wide variety of London schools during the First World War. What can these dream accounts tell us about young people’s resistance in school and elsewhere, and about children’s power?

Program NEHC25 pdf, 2.3 MB. (2387 Kb)

Day 1 

09:00- Registration and coffee
10:30-12:00 Panel sessions 
12:00 Lunch  
13:00-14:15 Keynote 1: Marcelo Caruso 
Coffee
14:45-16:15 Panel sessions
16:30-18:00 Panel sessions 
18:00-20:00 Welcome reception, Aula Magna  

Day 2

09.00-10:30 Paper sessions 
Coffee 
11.00-12:30 Paper sessions
12:30 Lunch 
13:30-14:30 Keynote 2: Stephanie Olsen
Coffee
15:00-16:30 Paper sessions  
16:45-18:15 Paper sessions
19:00 Conference dinner (Proviant, Albano)

Day 3 

10:00-11:30 Panel sessions
Coffee
12:00-13:30 Panel sessions  
13.30-14:30 Lunch
14:15-15.15 Post-conference social event. Guided tour: “Art and architecture at Frescati.”

The conference welcomes presentations in two formats: panels and individual papers. For scheduling reasons, a maximum of two presentations per person will be allowed. We accept submission in all Scandinavian languages as well as English.

Panels

Accepted panels are allotted 90-minutes-sessions and typically feature 3-5 panelists with time left for discussion. A panel proposal requires an abstract of no more than 500 words (including bibliography) describing the topic and scope of the panel and abstracts of no more than 300 words for each individual paper, names and affiliation of the authors, name of discussant (optional). Note that only one author should submit each panel proposal. Our Organizing Board will be reviewing the abstract and decide to reject or accept your proposal. 

Individual papers

Paper sessions are 90 minutes long and typically feature 3 or 4 presentations. Presentations should be maximum 15-20 minutes, depending on how many papers are presented in the session.

An individual paper submission must contain an abstract of no more than 500 words (including bibliography). Our Organizing Board will be reviewing the abstract and decide to reject or accept your proposal. 

Submission of abstracts

Last date for submission of abstracts: November 1, 2024
Link for submission (EasyChair)
 

December 15, 2024: Registration opens (Early bird)
February 1, 2025: Full price registration starts.

Registration link

Conference registration fee

Payment from private individuals must include VAT

Conference registration fee (including VAT):
Early bird (before February 1, 2025): 3750 SEK 
Early bird PhD Students (before February 1, 2025): 3125 SEK
Regular (from February 1, 2025): 4375 SEK
Regular PhD (from February 1, 2025): 3750 SEK

Conference dinner at Proviant Albano: 950 SEK (including VAT)

Conference registration fee excluding VAT. Not for private individuals!

Early bird (before February 1, 2025): 3000 SEK
Early bird PhD Students (before February 1, 2025): 2500 SEK
Regular (from February 1, 2025): 3500 SEK
Regular PhD (from February 1, 2025): 3000 SEK

Conference dinner at Proviant Albano: 950 SEK (including VAT)
 

We have a limited number of rooms that are reserved at the following hotels

Freys Hotel, Bryggargatan 12, 101 31 Stockholm

Book via this dedicated link (valid until 5 weeks prior to the conference)

ProfilHotels Hotel Riddargatan , Riddargatan 14, 114 35 Stockholm

Book via this dedicated link (valid until 14 March)

Raddison Blu Royal Viking Hotel, Vasagatan 1, 101 24 Stockholm

Book via this dedicated link (group rate) (valid until 14 April)

The 9th Nordic Education History Conference will be hosted by Stockholm University, Sweden, 14–16 May 2025. Papers accepted to this conference are invited to be submitted for a special issue on power and resistance in the history of education, to be published in the Nordic Journal of Educational History.

Expressions of interest shall be submitted in the form of an extended abstract (about 1.000 words, excl. bibliography) by email to the editors by February 1, 2025. The abstract shall provide information on sources/ methods, theory and the overarching argument in relation to power and/or resistance. Selected authors will then be invited to submit full papers for peer review (deadline June 15, 2025). 
 
Contributions can discuss issues related to either power, resistance or both, including how they are interrelated. In terms of empirical contexts, education can be broadly understood as an activity that takes place in institutions of various forms, but also in a range of other formal and informal contexts where some kind of transmission of knowledge and values is intended to take place.

Theoretically, there are a rich variety of traditions that have discussed how patterns of domination emerge, are maintained and spread to new contexts, as well as the ways in which they can be challenged or resisted. We welcome contributions that empirically and/or theoretically shed new light on these two social and educational processes. Contributions that in some ways relate to issues regarding the Nordic countries are of particular relevance.
 
The special issue will be edited by Joakim Landahl and Johanna Ringarp. Please email abstracts and questions to joakim.landahl@edu.su.se