Anders Ahlbäck
About me
Title of Docent in Nordic history, PhD in history 2011, Åbo Akademi University, Finland
Research areas:
- 19th and 20th century
- Gender history
- Masculinity studies
- Military conscription and military politics
- University history, history of knowledge
Current research: The Napoleonic wars gave rise to new ideas about universal conscription as a male civic duty - a radical shift away from early modern notions of military service as a life-long occupation for a clearly demarcated group from the bottom layers of society. I study how these new ideas were received and adapted in the Scandinavian countries, circa 1800–1880.
My perspective is that of gender history: I investigate the cultural notions of masculinity, soldiering and citizenship that were expressed and renegotiated in various debates on military conscription. What had the resistance against concscription to do with contemporary notions of estate and male honour? What was the significance of conscription and the miitary sphere when modern notions of male citizenship slowly replaced older political subjectivities?
My previous research has mainly concerned masculinity as a historical category in connection with military politics, male citizenship and masculine subjectivity from the 1890s until the 1930s. In my dissertation (2011) I studied debates on and depictions of conscription and peacetime military service in Finland, 1917–1939. In my post-doctoral research I have among other things analyzed political masculinities and ethnicity in the military sphere as well as memory and narrative in connections with men's subjective experiences of military service.
In a recent Nordic research project on Gender equality, Diversity and Societal Security (2018–21) I have also studied attitudes surrounding women's military participation in the 1980s and the debate on voluntary millitary service for women in Finland in the 1990s.
My second main research interest concerns university history and the history of knowledge. Within a large research project on the history of Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland, I investigated how university funding and management have changed since the 1960s, as well how the methods and purposes of university teaching were subject to intense criticism and development during the same period.