My name is Nike Stolpe Wikström, and I am a doctoral student in history of ideas. I hold undergraduate degrees in history of ideas and in psychology. My research interests lie primarily in history of emotions and environmental humanities , particularly human-animal relationship.

I earned my master’s degree in history of ideas in 2023 through the Master’s Programme in Critical Studies at the University of Gothenburg, with a special focus on ecocriticism. I also hold a B.Sc. in Psychology (Lund University, 2023) and a B.A. in History of Ideas (Lund University, 2020).

In the autumn of 2021, I was at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich. In the spring of 2022, I studied at Freie Universität in Berlin. During the summer of 2019, I studied at the Universitat de Barcelona; in the summer of 2022, at the International Psychoanalytic University; and in the summer of 2023, at Humboldt Universität. In the spring of 2025, I worked at the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, which promotes the application of humanities and social science methods and theories to issues related to the environment, nature, and climate, as well as their cultural and societal representations.

Research

My dissertation explores sensibility toward and through non-human animals in Sweden during the 18th century. The project is still taking shape and operates at the intersection of history of ideas, history of emotions, and environmental history. It departs from the premise that the ideas humans hold about themselves, others, and their surroundings shape how they perceive and relate to these – and that this, in turn, has consequences for the interplay between humans and the more-than-human.

The concept of sensibility has its roots in medical history: in the early 18th century, it described the body’s responsiveness to stimuli, but as knowledge of the nerves’ influence on the mind grew, the term came to denote disposition and the era’s ideal of compassion. This development is closely tied to the history of animals. The experiments that shaped the understanding of sensibility were often conducted on animals, but compassion was also expressed toward animals. I study this emotion-oriented circulation of knowledge, in which more-than-human actors were an integral part, with a particular focus on Sweden – a country that played a central role in ideas about human-animal relationships during the 18th century, not least through the influence of Carl von Linné.

Since 2023, I have been the editor-in-chief of Historisk studenttidskrift, a historical journal affiliated with Lund University that publishes open access via Open Journal Systems.

Together with Etzel Cardeña and Wilgot Qvant, I am writing an article on awe in VR.