Matts LindströmPart-time fixed-term lecturer

Research Project
My thesis revolves, in a broad sense, around historically changing notions about different technologies for handling and organising information; more specifically I want to explore the archive, both as an image or metaphor for society's collected past knowledge, and as a real, culture-historical environment, anchored in certain material practices.

The intention is to, through a series of case studies extending over a longer period of time (ca. 1700-today), study archive environments and the ideas that have structured and organised these spaces, with the aim of providing historical depth to now widely used concepts such as "information", "archive", "database" and "interface". In addition, the thesis aims to contribute with an analytical discussion around these concepts, and around the significance of the cultural storage mechanisms that every society makes itself dependent upon.

Examples of empirical starting points are: information technology before 1800; the modern research library (National Library ca. 1870); the modern institutional archive (National Archives ca. 1900); the digital archive (the present).

Supervisors
Solveig Jülich, Pelle Snickars

Interests
Media history, media theory, the historical dimension of information technologies, the archive as a space, the archive as a metaphor, digital humanities, visual culture, materiality, spatiality, Foucault, Kittler, Latour

Publications


• 2010: “Den välgörande omskapningen: Växelundervisning och visualitet i 1820-talets Sverige”. Master's thesis, History of Ideas: Stockholm University.

• 2010: “Om inskrifter lefvande träd” in ed. Björk, KresliFs & Lindström: The Story of Storage: 1. Compendium. Mediehistoriskt arkiv, 18. Stockholm: Kungl. biblioteket.

• 2010: (with Björk & KresliFs) “Introduktion” in ed. Björk, Kreslins & Lindström: The Story of Storage: 1. Compendium. Mediehistoriskt arkiv, 18. Stockholm: Kungl. biblioteket.