Annika BergSenior lecturer, associate professor
About me
I am an associate professor and senior lecturer in the History of Ideas at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics. My research revolves largely around the social, cultural and political history of medicine – including healthcare and psychiatry – and questions of power, governance and social policy. I strive to apply intersectional and transnational perspectives, and also to go beyond the canon of intellectual history, to see how ideas have been transformed and developed in practice.
My main research focus is on the 20th century, with two books fairly fresh from print: En svindlande uppgift: Sverige och biståndet 1945–1975 [appr. A Vertiginous Task: Sweden and Development Aid, 1945–1945], co-written with Urban Lundberg & Mattias Tydén (Ordfront förlag, 2021), and Allmän rösträtt? Rösträttens begränsningar i Sverige efter 1921 [appr. Universal suffrage? Restrictions on the right to vote in Sweden after 1921], co-edited with Martin Ericsson (Makadam förlag, 2021). My most recent book before that was De samhällsbesvärliga: Förhandlingar om psykopati och kverulans i 1930- och 40-talens Sverige [appr. The Social Troublemakers: Negotiations around psychopathy and querulous behaviour in 1930s and 1940s Sweden] (Makadam förlag, 2018).
In parallel with my research, I teach and have been teaching at all levels from introductory courses to PhD supervision – presently, I act as principal supervisor for two doctoral students. In teaching, I have moved over a broad chronological and thematical spectrum. Since spring 2020, I also act as director of studies for History of Ideas, from Beginner's to Masters level, at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics.
I defended my own doctoral thesis, Den gränslösa hälsan: Signe och Axel Höjer, folkhälsan och expertisen (Boundless health: On Signe and Axel Höjer, Public Health and Expertise) in the history of science and ideas at Uppsala University in 2009. The study revolved around Signe Höjer and Axel Höjer (two key actors in the construction of the Swedish welfare state who were also a married couple) from the end of World War I to around 1970, and focused particularly on their different roles as experts on health and welfare and their differing possibilities to assert unique knowledge. In doing this, I also examined folkhälsa (approximately = public health) as a flexible and expansive concept, and problematized the couple's views on health care as a key to a better society and a better world. Power and gender were consistent grids of analysis as I studied expertise in a dual sense: on the one hand, knowledge of how things should be done (or more specifically here, how social problems should be solved), and on the other hand, people who claim to represent such knowledge. I also consistently strived to broaden the history of the Swedish welfare state and folkhem project by highlighting how strongly this aspect of nation building was influenced by transnational transfer of ideas and policies.
In the years after gaining my PhD and before being recruited to the Department of Culture and Aesthetics as a university lecturer in 2016, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher and teacher at the Department of History of Science and Ideas at Uppsala University, as a postdoctoral researcher at The Institute for Future Studies in Stockholm, as a researcher at the Department of History at Uppsala University and as a researcher and teacher at the Department of History at Stockholm University. During these years I worked more or less in parallel within a number of different research projects: ”De sjukligt kränkta: Om kverulans som samhällsfara i folkhemmets Sverige” ("The pathologically offended: On querulous behaviour and social danger in folkhem era Sweden”, postdoc project funded by the Swedish Research Council); "Patientens mening: Om handlingsutrymmen och alternativa subjektiveringar inom den anstaltsbundna sinnessjuk- och sinnesslövården 1870–1970” ("The Patient’s view: On action space and alternative subjectivations within institutions for psychiatric and mental disability care 1870-1970”, funded by the Swedish Research Council, together with an ethnologist and a historian); "Scientific Personae in Cultural Encounters in Twentieth Century Europe” (funded by Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg's memorial fund, including historians from Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands); and ”Världen som arbetsfält: Svenskt bistånd under tre decennier” ("The world as a field of work: Swedish development aid during three decades", funded by the Swedish Research Council, together with two historians).
Currently, I work with six other researchers in an interdisciplinary project, ”Allmän rösträtt? Rösträttens begränsningar i Sverige efter 1921”, ("Universal suffrage? Voting restrictions and disenfranchisement in Sweden after 1921”), which has been granted four years of funding from the Swedish Research Council. I am also affiliated with the research program ”Medicine at the Borders of Life” at the Department of the History of Science and Ideas at Uppsala University, in which I worked part-time 2016–2019.
History of ideas as a field of research at Stockholm University
Selected publications
Monographs
Annika Berg, Urban Lundberg & Mattias Tydén, En svindlande uppgift: Sverige och biståndet 1945–1975 (Stockholm: Ordfront, 2021).
De samhällsbesvärliga: Förhandlingar om psykopati och kverulans i 1930- och 40-talens Sverige (Göteborg & Stockholm: Makadam förlag, 2018). (Also available in digital form)
Den gränslösa hälsan: Signe och Axel Höjer, folkhälsan och expertisen (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2009). PhD thesis. (Also available in digital form)
Edited volumes
Allmän rösträtt? Rösträttens begränsningar i Sverige efter 1921, Annika Berg & Martin Ericsson, eds. (Göteborg & Stockholm, Makadam förlag, 2021).
Par i vetenskap och politik: Intellektuella äktenskap i moderniteten, Annika Berg, Christina Florin & Per Wisselgren, eds. (Umeå: Boréa förlag, 2011).
Articles, book chapters
”Psykopati”, in Svenska begreppshistorier: Från antropocen till åsiktskorridor, Jonas Hansson & Kristiina Savin, eds. (Stockholm: Fri tanke, 2022), pp. 527–544.
”Det värdefulla liket: Om kunskap, begärlighet och sörjbarhet i anatomins idéhistoria” in Dödens idéhistoria, Karin Dirke, Andreas Hellerstedt & Martin Wiklund, eds. (Stockholm: Appell förlag, 2022), pp. 196–277.
”Ur galen synvinkel? Om inlevelsens gränser och psykiatrihistoria ur patientperspektiv”, in Konsten att kontextualisera: Om historisk förståelse och meningsskapande, Staffan Bergwik, Linn Holmberg, Karin Dirke, eds. (Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 2022), pp. 119–137.
"Rösträttens skiftande gränser i den svenska representativa demokratin" [co-written with Martin Ericsson], in Allmän rösträtt? Rösträttens begränsningar i Sverige efter 1921, Annika Berg & Martin Ericsson, eds. (Göteborg & Stockholm, Makadam förlag, 2021), pp. 11-39.
"Ett straff på straffet: Om straffpåföljdsstrecket och varför det avskaffades", in Allmän rösträtt? Rösträttens begränsningar i Sverige efter 1921, red. Annika Berg & Martin Ericsson (Göteborg & Stockholm, Makadam förlag, 2021), pp. 65-85.
"Det sista strecket: Omyndigförklaring som rösträttshinder", in Allmän rösträtt? Rösträttens begränsningar i Sverige efter 1921, red. Annika Berg & Martin Ericsson (Göteborg & Stockholm, Makadam förlag, 2021), pp. 121-155.
”Psychopaths, Querulants and Class: On Controversial Diagnoses, Money, Norms, and Networks in Sweden in the 1930s and 1940s”, in Social Class and Mental Illness in Northern Europe, Petteri Pietikäinen & Jesper Vaczy Kragh, eds. (Routledge, 2019), 133–152. [Disclaimer: Unfortunately, this text was heavily copyedited just before publication, without my knowledge or approval; in this process some factual errors were made too. If you are interested in the topic, please send me an e-mail to get my own final version of the text.]
”An Agent of Indirect Propaganda: Normalizing Nazi Germany in the Swedish Medical Journal Svenska Läkartidningen 1933–1945, in Intellectual Collaboration with the Third Reich: Treason or Reason?, Maria Björkman, Patrik Lundell & Sven Widmalm, eds. (London & New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 150–165.
”Att straffas ut från vallokalen – om straffpåföljd som rösträttshinder”, in Arbetarhistoria 44 (2019) no. 2–3 [170–171], pp. 36–39.
”De ovuxna vuxna: Om omyndighet som rösträttshinder”, in Arbetarhistoria 44 (2019) no. 2–3 [170–171], pp. 49–53.
”Svensson, Ruth Margareta” in Svenskt biografiskt lexikon, häfte 170 Swenson-Swensson (Stockholm: Svenskt biografiskt lexikon, 2019), pp. 738–742. (Also available in digital form).
”Rösträtt för alla? Begränsningar i rösträtten efter 1921” [with Martin Ericsson & Fia Sundevall], in Rösträttens århundrade: kampen, utvecklingen och framtiden för demokratin i Sverige, Ulrika Holgersson & Lena Wängnerud, eds. (Göteborg: Makadam förlag i samarbete med Riksbankens jubileumsfond, 2018), pp. 219–239. (Also available digitally)
”The people’s health, the nation’s health, the world’s health: Folkhälsa and folkehelse in the writings of Axel Höjer and Karl Evang” [with Teemu Ryymin] in Conceptualising Public Health: Historical and Contemporary Struggles over Key Concepts, Johannes Kananen, Sophy Bergenheim & Merle Wessel, eds. (London & New York, Routledge, 2018), pp. 76–100.
Biographical articles about Ruth Svensson, Signe Höjer and Anna Sissak Bardizbanian in Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon, 2018.
”Public health and persecution: Debates on the possible migration of Jewish physicians to Sweden from Nazi Germany”, in Doctors Beyond Borders: The Transnational Migration of Physicians in the Twentieth Century, Laurence Monnais & David Wright, eds. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), pp. 73–95.
”Att skriva sig fri: Om 'psykopatiska' patienters förhandlingsutrymmen i 1930-talets Sverige” in Inspärrad: Röster från intagna på sinnessjukhus, fängelser och andra anstalter 1850-1992, Roddy Nilsson & Maria Vallström, eds. (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2016), pp. 315–355.
Introduction (with Per Wisselgren and Christina Florin) to Par i vetenskap och politik: Intellektuella äktenskap i moderniteten, Annika Berg, Christina Florin & Per Wisselgren, eds. (Umeå: Boréa förlag, 2011), pp. 12–43 (+ endnotes pp. 371–374).
”Det politiska privatlivet: Samarbete, konflikter och omförhandlingar i Signe och Axel Höjers tidiga äktenskap, 1919—1929”, in Par i vetenskap och politik: Intellektuella äktenskap i moderniteten, Annika Berg, Christina Florin & Per Wisselgren, eds. (Umeå: Boréa förlag, 2011), pp. 252–300 (+ endnotes pp. 415–423).
”’Men om Elin skulle jag velat skriva en hel bok’: Om den ofullkomliga vänskapen mellan Elin Wägner, Axel Höjer och Signe Höjer”, in Könsöverskridande vänskap, Ingrid Holmqvist, ed. (Göteborg/Stockholm: Makadam 2011), pp. 234–267.
”En ful vana: Cigaretten och den nya kvinnan i 1930- och 40-talens Sverige”, in In på bara huden: Medicinhistoriska studier tillägnade Karin Johannisson, Torbjörn Gustafsson Chorell & Maja Bondestam, eds. (Nora: Nya Doxa, 2010), pp. 87–110.
”A Suitable Country: The Relationship between Sweden’s Interwar Population Policy and Family Planning in Postindependence India” in Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 33 (2010), pp. 297-320.
”Power, Knowledge and Acknowledgement of Expertise: Signe and Axel Höjer’s Strategies to Launch Public Health Ideas, 1919–1970”, in In Experts We Trust: Knowledge, Politics and Bureaucracy in Nordic Welfare States, Åsa Lundqvist & Klaus Petersen (Odense: University of Southern Denmark Press, 2010), pp. 181–221.
”Åter från dödens väntrum: Om nära döden-upplevelser på film”, in Den mediala döden: Idéhistoriska variationer, Louise Nilsson & Mathias Persson, eds. (Lund: Ellerströms, 2008), pp. 11–47.
”From Copycats to Double Agents: Axel and Signe Höjer and the Transfer of Public Health Policies in 20th-Century Sweden”, in Transferring Public Health, Medical Knowledge and Science in the 19th and 20th Century: Conference Proceedings, Astri Andresen & Tore Grønlie, eds. (Bergen: Rokkansenteret, 2007), pp. 133–153.
Döda kroppar i vetenskapens tjänst: Om anatomiska dissektioner och utsatta människors rättigheter i 1920-talets Sverige, no. 4 in the series Dixi: Arbetsrapporter från institutionen för idé- och lärdomshistoria (Uppsala: Institutionen för idé- och lärdomshistoria, Uppsala universitet, 2003).
