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Hanna Jansson

About me

I am a postdoctoral researcher in Ethnology, and at the Centre for Maritime Studies. In my research, I investigate the practices of disposal of cremated human remains at sea. The study is based upon interviews with bereaved people who have scattered ashes over water, and with proffessionals who have experiences from the practice.

The purpose is to understand how the ocean or lakes are constituted as places of bereavment or commoration, and how commemoration is done in a maritime landscape.

Publications

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

  • Med tanke på läsarna

    2019. Hanna Jansson. Tidsskrift for kulturforskning (1)

    Article

    This article discusses narrative and social challenges following development in communication technology. The paper aims to show how Swedish cruising sailors adapt the style and content of their online travel writing, with the interest of different audience groups in mind. How do they manage the sometimes conflicting interests of different audience groups? What is considered un-tellable, and why? The analysis is based on interviews with Swedish cruising sailors and on analysis of primarily four online cruising travelogues. The article combines folkloristic and socio-linguistic perspectives on communicative competence and on immediate or ongoing storytelling, to describe a narrative awareness of the cruisers. As I show, concern for the readers make online travel writing whilst travelling a work-like task. The cruisers develop strategies to write entertaining and exciting stories without worrying family members, and must try to instruct fellow cruisers without boring the non-sailors in the audience. Lastly, the article advocates a combination of online and offline qualitative fieldwork to enable an understanding of online and ongoing storytelling practices, and the social and narrative strategies of people active in social media.

    Read more about Med tanke på läsarna

  • Drömmen om äventyret

    2017. Hanna Jansson (et al.).

    Thesis (Doc)

    This dissertation investigates the online travel writing of Swedish cruising sailors. The aim is to analyze how crews in online travelogues describe ongoing experiences, and to show how the journeys, the stories and the storytelling are mutually related to one another. As journeys are both the plots of the stories and the contexts for the storytelling, the travelogues in question challenge established narrative definitions. The analysis combines Amy Shuman’s folkloristic research on immediate storytelling with historian Reinhart Kosellecks’ perspectives on time as situated and subjective. Storytelling is thereby understood as a contextual and variable practice: conditioned, enabled and limited by the writers’ current position and point of view, and by a series of practical, technological, narrative and social factors. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork online and offline. The material primarily consists of four crews’ blogs and web pages, written texts, photographs, and readers’ comments. Interviews were conducted with the main informants and an additional fifteen crews in Sweden and in the harbours of Horta and Las Palmas. As the analysis show, the sailors’ write and publish updates from ever-changing positions in time and space, thereby depicting their journeys as a practical and cognitive process. These stories are to a great extent motivated by and directed towards the future, as sailors long for warmer destinations and worry about upcoming passages. The sailors write for a real-time audience partly consisting of families and friends, who anxiously wait for new updates. Writing is therefore sometimes perceived as a work-like task, and the sailors must develop strategies in order to write entertaining and exciting stories without further troubling their readers. The study’s result indicate that online storytelling can be understood as a process, which cannot be separated from the described events, nor from its everyday contexts. Stories, storytelling and experiences are understood as integrated with each other, since the storytelling as a practice become an established part of the everyday life during journeys.

    Read more about Drömmen om äventyret

  • Resans mikrodramer

    2017. Hanna Jansson. Angöringar, 39-58

    Chapter

    Det tar nästan en månad att segla från Kanarieöarna till Karibien. Det är en överfart som sägs göra seglaren till en riktig långfärdsseglare, men som också sliter på humöret och tålamodet. För de många långfärdsseglare som nu bloggar om sina resor för läsare därhemma innebär atlantöverfarten ytterligare en utmaning. För vad skriver man om när ”ingenting” tycks hända?

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