Stockholm university
Denna sida på svenska

Cecilia Åse

About me

I'am a political scientist and professor in gender studies at the Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Gender Studies at Stockholm University. My research intresests are gender and sexualities in relation to insecurities/crises and war-making; in particular topics concerned with the politics of gendered protection. Currently my research deals with gender and hertigization processes, gendered Cold War memories, and the changing role of the cultural heritage in times of war and geopolitical insecurity. I am also focused on understanding the role of gender/sexualities in Sweden's abandoning neutrality, and how the Nato-membership will affect national identity and Swedish gender exceptionalism.

In the ongoing project "The remaking of collective memories in times of war and geopolitical tensions" the aim is to understand how military conflict and a deteriorating security environmnet influcence the production of collective memories and historical narratives of war and conflict. 

My publications include several books on gender and nationalism and on feminist theory and methodology.  I have also done extensive work on the Swedish constitutional monarchy as a gendered institution and re-evaluated the Stockholm syndrome from a feminist perspective. My work on gender and heritagization, protection, war-making, and crisis narratives appears in International Feminist Journal of Politics, International Journal of Heritage Studies, Critical Military Studies, Cooperation and Conflict, and Journal of Cold War Studies. I have published the volume Gendering Military Sacrifice. A Feminist Comparative Analysis (Routledge 2019, with Maria Wendt).

Research projects

Publications

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

  • Cold War time: Contemporary military heritage in Sweden

    2024. Cecilia Åse (et al.). Cold War Museology, 201-217

    Chapter

    This chapter combines critical heritage studies and feminist international relations in an analysis of temporality in Sweden’s Cold War military heritagisation. Sweden’s Cold War history is characterised by war-preparedness and a lack of significant military action, allowing for different framings of time in heritage presentations. Accounting for Sweden’s nonaligned yet heavily militarised stance during this period, we demonstrate how different temporal frames shape collective identity and ideas of security. Four temporal constructs are identified, of which two are discussed at length: parenthesis-time, suspending the timeline and reinforcing the idea of a perpetual threat, and phantasm-time, blurring the distinction between actual events and hypothetical scenarios, resulting in hyperdramatic narratives. These temporalities contribute to the promotion of military violence as a means of ensuring security while discouraging democratic discussions. Our analysis underscores the political significance of military heritagisation in shaping national identity and security perceptions.

    Read more about Cold War time

  • Gender, memories and national security: the making of a Cold War Military heritage

    2022. Cecilia Åse, Maria Wendt. International feminist journal of politics 24 (2), 221-242

    Article

    Cold War military remnants and experiences have recently been turned into museums and tourist attractions in many European countries. Recognizing such memory making as essentially political, we examine the role of gender and sexuality in the making of a Cold War military heritage. Combining critical feminist and intersectional Cold War research with gender perspectives on military memory, this article contributes to feminist conceptualizations of the relationship between gendered security and the production of memory. By highlighting narratives and spatial, visual, and acoustic arrangements, we investigate state-sponsored museum displays of two national security crises in the Swedish context: the 1952 Soviet downing of a DC-3 airplane and the submarine hunts in the Baltic Sea in the early 1980s. The analysis reveals how gender works to construct a geopolitical outlook, enable emotional identifications, and restore national order. Heterosexuality and hierarchical gender norms emerge as prerequisites for national security. We argue that when visitors are encouraged to feel gendered national security, opportunities to critically reflect upon Cold War histories decrease, promoting the depoliticization of security politics and militarism.

    Read more about Gender, memories and national security

  • Gendering the military past: Understanding heritage and security from a feminist perspective

    2021. Cecilia Åse, Maria Wendt. Cooperation and Conflict 56 (3), 286-308

    Article

    This article showcases how a feminist perspective provides novel insights into the relations between military heritage/history and national security politics. We argue that analysing how gender and sexualities operate at military heritage sites reveals how these operations dis/encourage particular understandings of security and limit the range of acceptable national protection policies. Two recent initiatives to preserve the military heritage of the Cold War period in Sweden are examined: the Cold War exhibits at Air Force Museum in Linköping and the redevelopment of a formerly sealed off military compound at Bungenäs, where bunkers have been remade into exclusive summer homes. By combining feminist international relations and critical heritage studies, we unpack the material, affective and embodied underpinnings of security produced at military heritage sites. A key conclusion is that the way heritagization incorporates the ‘naturalness’ of the gender binary and heterosexuality makes conceptualizing security without territory, or territory without military protection, inaccessible. The gendering of emotions and architectural and spatial arrangements supports historical narratives that privilege masculine protection and reinforce a taken-for-granted nativist community. A feminist analysis of military heritage highlights how gender and sexualities restrict security imaginaries; that is, understandings of what is conceivable as security.

    Read more about Gendering the military past

Show all publications by Cecilia Åse at Stockholm University

Edit the profile

Professor in Gender Studies. Associate Professor in Political Science

profilePageLayout