Since 2019, I have been teaching the following courses: 

• World economic history (as part of the International Business and Politics (IBP) program, a cooperation with Stockholm Business School and the Deparment of Political Science)
• Economic thought in world history (the IBP program)
• Tankar om ekonomin på Ekonomisk historia I
• Stora omvandlingar på Ekonomisk historia II
• Självständigt arbete i ekonomisk historia på Ekonomisk historia II
• I'm also supervising students on the bachelor and master's level and I'm assistant supervisor to Ph.D. candidate Susanne Berghofer who is working on a thesis about the employer organizations in the Swedish textile industry in the postwar period.

Research interests:

• History of consumption and marketing 
• The historical development and regulation of markets
• The role of ideas and norms for the legitimacy of markets
• Swedish business and the European market
• Marketization and neoliberalism

During the fall semester of 2023 I was associated reseacher at the Centre of International History and Political Studies of Globalization at Lausanne University in Switzerland. I have also been a visiting scholar at the European Institute at Columbia University in New York. I was coordinator in the research programme Neoliberalism in the Nordics based at Uppsala University between 2021–2024. I am one of the founders of the Advertising historical network in Sweden (Reklamhistoriska nätverket) that started in 2017.

My dissertation Sound and Loyal Business. The history of the Swedish advertising cartel 1915–1965 was shortlisted for the best dissertation prize in business history between January 2018 until January 2022, awarded by the European Business History Association in Madrid, Spain, 22-24 June 2022. 

Since the fall of 2024, I'm developing an edited volume together with Klara Arnberg: ‘Have it Your Way’: Marketing expertise and consumer culture from the oil crisis to the dot-com bubble with planned publication in 2026. 

Research projects

2022-2025: 

Three year postdoc project as a Wallander grant recipient entitled "Market makers. Advertising's role in the socio-economic transformation of Sweden ca 1970-2000".

Recently finished projects include: 

2020–2022:

'The market of self-realization (Självförverkligandets marknad: Svensk korrespondens- och distansutbildning, 1890–1970-tal)', financed by Jan Wallanders och Tom Hedelius Stiftelse). The project was connected to the department of economic history at Uppsala University.

2021–2023

'Understanding international cartels in the 20th century: tracing size and scope', I started working in the project in May 2021, financed by Jan Wallanders och Tom Hedelius Stiftelse. 

 

Selected publications 

Åström Rudberg, Elin, forthcoming. "Lifestyle Research and the Making of the Sovereign Consumer in Late Twentieth-Century Sweden", Contemporary European History. 

Husz, Orsi, Larsson Heidenblad David, Åström Rudberg, Elin, forthcoming. "Wage-earners, taxpayers or everyman capitalists? The making of a mutual fund culture in Sweden” in Andersson J. & Howell C. (Eds.), Nordic Neoliberalisms, Routledge.

Innset, Ola & Åström Rudberg, Elin (2024). "Varieties of marketization: Introducing a new framework for the study of market reforms in Nordic welfare states", in special issue on Capitalism and the Nordic model in Nordic Welfare Studies. 

Åström Rudberg, Elin (2023). “Satsa på dig själv! Näringslivets politiska marknadsföring mot ungdomar på 1970-talet” (Invest in yourself! Organized business’ political marketing towards youth in the 1970s), in Andersson, Jenny, Husz, Orsi, Glover, Nikolas & Larsson Heidenblad, David (eds.), Marknadens Tid (The Market Era), Nordic Academic Press.

Åström Rudberg, Elin & Husz, Orsi (2023), "The technicians of consumer society: The creation of advertising men and practical advertising knowledge in early twentieth-century Sweden" in Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JHRM-11-2022-0032/full/html (open acess).

Åström Rudberg, Elin (2022), "Doing business in the schools of the welfare state: Competing ‘entrepreneurial selves’ and the roots of entrepreneurship education in 1980s Sweden", Enterprise & Society, https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2022.26 (open access).

Åström Rudberg Elin & Kuorelahti, Elina (2021). "'We have a prodigious amount in common'. Reappraising Americanization and circulation of knowledge in the interwar Nordic advertising industry", Business History, https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2021.1991915 (open access).

 

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Varieties of Marketization: Introducing a new Framework for the Study of Market Reforms in Nordic Welfare States

  2024. Ola Innset, Elin Åström Rudberg. Nordisk välfärdsforskning | Nordic Welfare Research 9 (1), 11-27

  Article

  The article develops a new framework for the study ofmarket reforms in Nordic welfare states based on a divi-sion between “markets”, “quasi-markets” and “pseudo-markets”. The two latter types of marketization have been themost common, and the article exemplifies them by revisiting the early 1990s Swedish school reform, “Friskolere-formen”—which instigated a quasi-market for publicly funded schools run by both for-profit companies and non-profit actors—and the Norwegian hospital reform, “Foretaksreformen” of 2001—which created what we call a pseu-do-market, in which public hospitals were reorganized to mimic the structures of capitalist enterprise. By discussingthe different reforms in relation to justification, the typeof welfare state sector, and the political orientation of thegovernment implementing the reform, our study sheds new light on similarities and differences in marketizationprocesses in the Nordics. Particularly, we find that the justification for the reforms differed, with the Swedish reformbeing justified in ideological terms and the Norwegian in technocratic terms. Contrary to some literature, we holdthat marketization has fundamentally altered Nordic welfare states and the relationship between capital and societyin the Nordics, and we suggest that our framework could be used for future comparative studies of market reforms.

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• Wage Earners, Taxpayers or Everyman Capitalists? The Making of a Mutual Fund Culture in Sweden

  2025. Orsi Husz, David Larsson Heidenblad, Elin Åström Rudberg. Nordic Neoliberalisms

  Chapter

  This chapter explains how a mutual fund culture, which strengthened the link between households and the stock market, emerged exceptionally early in Sweden. We explore the popularisation of individual shareholding through state-subsidised fund savings schemes, the Tax Funds (introduced by the centre-right government in 1978) and the similar Everyman’s Funds (introduced by the Social Democratic government in 1984). Although initially politically controversial, these programmes ultimately paved the way for a seemingly mundane investment culture. Through this case we argue that neoliberalisation in Sweden involved the creation of hybrid subjects that combined older forms of identification rooted in a welfare statist culture (the wage earner and the taxpayer) with identity positions associated with a new everyday capitalist identity. One explanation for the exceptional Swedish development lies in the turmoil surrounding the so-called wage-earner funds with individual share ownership posited as an alternative to the collectively owned funds. In the other Nordic countries, the conflict between labour and capital was less intense. One fallout of this conflict in Sweden was a nation of everyman investors.

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• Satsa på dig själv! Näringslivets politiska marknadsföring mot ungdomar

  2023. Elin Åström Rudberg. Marknadens tid, 81-102

  Chapter

  I kapitlet analyseras det organiserade svenska näringslivets satsningar för att påverka ungdomar under 1970-talet, särskilt den uppmärksammade kampanjen "Satsa på dig själv" från 1979 som har kommit att bli en omtvistad symbol för hela marknadsvändingen i Sverige.  

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• The technicians of consumer society: the creation of advertising men and practical advertising knowledge in early twentieth-century Sweden

  2023. Elin Åström Rudberg, Orsi Husz. Journal of Historical Research in Marketing

  Article

  Purpose:The purpose of this paper is to investigate an unexplored part of advertising history; namely, the education of a large, mundane, nonelite group of advertising professionals, so-called advertising technicians and the knowledge they acquired. Examining correspondence courses in the technology of advertising, we focus particularly on the production of technified knowledge and mass personas. Design/methodology/approach:The study is based on a qualitative analysis of course material from Sweden’s two largest correspondence schools in the 1930s and 1940s. Two theoretical concepts guide the analysis: the concept of market devices and the notion of personas, both of which we use to show how the courses crafted a particular kind of advertising professional as well as knowledge. Findings:The study shows that courses created a template-based persona of the advertising technician, who possessed what we call bounded originality characterized by diligence, modesty and rule-governed creative imagination. Similarly, the courses created a body of knowledge that was controllable and highly practice-oriented. The advertising technician was expected to embody and internalize the advertising knowledge, thus, becoming an extension of this knowledge on the market. Originality/value:By directing the searchlight at the cadre of ordinary, middle-class advertising professionals instead of the high-profile “advertising creatives” and innovators, the paper brings to the foreground the nonelite level of the advertising industry. These practitioners went to work in the business world to produce the everyday advertising that was not necessarily groundbreaking but was needed in a growing mass-consumption society.

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• Doing Business in the Schools of the Welfare State: Competing “Entrepreneurial Selves” and the Roots of Entrepreneurship Education in 1980s Sweden

  2022. Elin Åström Rudberg. Enterprise & society

  Article

  This article concerns the rise of young entrepreneurship education programs in 1980s Sweden, which entered schools surprisingly early and quickly, backed by organized Swedish business. The increased popularity of entrepreneurship education toward the end of the twentieth century in many European welfare states is usually associated with a shift toward neoliberal, market-oriented, policies. It is argued here that an important reason for young entrepreneurship’s success was its ability to connect with the Swedish tradition of cooperation and democratic decision making, in combination with values such as individualism and competition. A case in point is the surprising compatibility between progressive pedagogical ideas and “neoliberal” entrepreneurialism. The article is based on a study of Ung Företagsamhet (Young Entrepreneurship, henceforth UF), the Swedish version of the American organization Junior Achievement, and the ambition of the consumer cooperative movement’s think tank, Koopi, to offer a different kind of entrepreneurship education. In the analysis, the concept of “the entrepreneurial self” is applied to these two different programs, and the results show how they clashed, but also overlapped, in ways that help explain the success of UF. The article is a contribution to our understanding of how entrepreneurship discourse emerged and manifested itself in everyday environments in the late twentieth century, and as such also contributes to the history of Nordic neoliberalism.

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• The rise of entrepreneurship in Swedish schools

  2022. Elin Åström Rudberg.

  Other

  Entrepreneurship training was introduced in selected Swedish high schools already in 1980 and has since gained a strong position in the school system. In order to understand this development, we need to examine how the discourse of entrepreneurialism was connected to key tenets of the welfare state (such as progressive educational ideals) as well as neoliberal ideas.

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• Så blev svenskarna sålda på att starta eget

  2021. Elin Åström Rudberg. Svenska Dagbladet

  Article

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• ‘We have a prodigious amount in common’: Reappraising Americanisation and circulation of knowledge in the interwar Nordic advertising industry

  2021. Elin Åström Rudberg, Elina Kuorelahti. Business History

  Article

  This article discusses the interwar collaboration in the Nordic advertising industry in relation to the literature on ‘Americanisation’ in advertising and business history. We argue that the focus on Americanisation has caused research to overlook other important arenas for sharing knowledge in the development of advertising and commercial practices in twentieth-century Europe. We show the importance of the systematic collaboration between advertising communities in the Nordic countries through which Anglo-Saxon ideas, as well as domestic experiences, were shared. The collaboration was a crucial platform for the advertising industry to achieve increased societal clout. We also find that the Nordic advertising industry, as a collective, clearly distanced themselves from continental Europe based on a perception that Anglo-Saxon and Nordic advertising shared the same foundations. The results raise questions concerning assumptions about Americanisation and the role of alternative sources of inspiration and transnational collaboration in advertising history.

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Show all publications by Elin Åström Rudberg at Stockholm University