Staffan BergwikProfessor

I teach introductory courses on the cultural history of modern Europe as well as master courses on cultural history, media history and history of science. A particular interest is to teach students to develop their skills in history writing. I have developed several courses on issues of theory and method in cultural history and history of science. The bulk of my teaching is classes for students in the humanities, however I have also taught several courses to students in engineering and the natural sciences on science and technology studies (STS).

My research focuses on the cultural history of the natural sciences during the 19th and 20th centuries, with particular emphasis on the relationship between science and society. I am interested in historical time and temporality, science and media, the history of the senses and emotions, as well as the history of geography.

I am currently working on the research project "Temporalities of Science: Constructing Past, Present, and Future of Knowledge 1945-1980" This project is funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (2025-2027) and investigates perceptions of the past, present and future of scientific knowledge – or “temporalities of science” – between 1945 and 1980. It explores three institutional innovations crucial to politics of scientific knowledge in the postwar era: scientometrics, science documentation, and science policies. Through this project, I aim to understand ideas about history, progress, and potential future limits of growth, and how notions about past epochs, historical trajectories or the nature of the present were institutionalized in science policy infrastructure for measuring and managing research. The project combines research on historical time with history of science. It aligns with research on historical and cultural temporalities, and offers insights into how perceptions of time shaped scientific knowledge and policies in the 20th century.

I have previously explored questions related to historical time as an editor for the anthology “Times of History, Times of Nature: Temporalization and the Limits of Modern Knowledge” (Berghahn 2022): https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/EkstromTimes.

In a prior project, I researched the history of the view from above, examining how Western knowledge practices have created vantage points from above to understand, control, and experience large patterns in nature and culture. This project culminated in the book Terranauterna: Om människans dröm att upptäcka och kartlägga världen (Norstedts, 2024)

Furthermore, I have researched and written about gender structures in Swedish natural science during the first half of the 20th century, the media history of the sciences, and the history of science education. I have published in journals such as Isis, Science in Context, and Centaurus. Additionally, I have served as an editor for Domesticity in the Making of Modern Science (Palgrave MacMillan, 2016) and published the monograph Kunskapens osynliga scener: Vetenskapshistorier 1900-1950 (Makadam, 2016).

List of publications:

Times of history, times of nature: Temporalization and the limits of modern knowledge (New York: Berghahn, 2022), eds Staffan Bergwik & Anders Ekström

https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/EkstromTimes

"Elevation and emotion: Sven Hedin's mountain expedition to Transhimalaya 1906-1908", Centaurus: An international journal of the history of science and its cultural aspects, https://doi.org/10.1111/1600-0498.12298

Open access: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1600-0498.12298

”Standing on whose shoulders? A critical comment on the history of knowledge”, Forms of Knowledge: Developing the history of knowledge (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2020). Co-authored with Linn Holmberg, Stockholms universitet.

The essays ”The Nordenskjöld Game”, ”The Patchwork Panorama” and ”Arrhenius in the Session Hall”, in Knowledge in motion: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the making of modern society (Göteborg: Makadam, 2019) eds Johan Kärnfelt, Karl Grandin & Solveig Jülich.

http://www.makadambok.se/produkt/knowledge-in-motion-the-royal-swedish-academy-of-sciences-and-the-making-of-modern-society/

”Panoramic visions: Sven Hedin in ’Transhimalaya’ 1906-1909”, The power of the In-between: Intermediality as a tool for Aesthetic Analysis and Critical Reflectioneds. Sara Callahan, Magdalena Holdar, Christer Johansson & Sonya Pettersson (Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 2018).

https://www.stockholmuniversitypress.se/site/books/10.16993/baq/

Domesticity in the making of modern science (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), eds Staffan Bergwik, Don Opitz & Brigitte van Tiggelen

https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137492722

“Father, Son and the Entrepreneurial Spirit: Otto Pettersson, Hans Pettersson and early twentieth century inheritance of oceanography”, Domesticity in the making of modern science (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), eds Staffan Bergwik, Don Opitz & Brigitte van Tiggelen

https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137492722

“Introduction: Domesticity and the Historiography of Science”, Domesticity in the making of modern science (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), eds Staffan Bergwik, Don Opitz & Brigitte van Tiggelen. Co-authored with Opitz and van Tiggelen

”A Fractured Position in a Stable Partnership: Ebba Hult De Geer, Gerard De Geer and Early Twentieth Century Swedish Geology”, Science in Context, 27: 3, September 2014.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/science-in-context/article/a-fractured-position-in-a-stable-partnership-ebba-hult-gerard-de-geer-and-early-twentieth-century-swedish-geology/021CF6F5772DC9E1261A95142FB99D99

“An Assemblage of Science and Home: The Gendered Lifestyle of Svante Arrhenius and  Early Twentieth Century Physical Chemistry”, Isis, 105: 2, June 2014.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/676567

”The Historicity of the Physics Class: Enactments, Mimes and Imitation”, Cultural Studies of Science Education, April 2013. 

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11422-013-9497-4#page-1

”Networks, marginality and fractured identities: The history of women in science and feminist science studies”, i Never Mind the Gap! Gendering Science in Transgressive Encounters, Martha Blomqvist & Ester Ehnsmyr (eds) (Uppsala: Center for Gender Research, 2010).

”On the outskirts of physics: Eva von Bahr as an outsider within in early twentieth century Swedish experimental physics”, i Centaurus: An International Journal of the History of Science and its Cultural Aspects, vol 51 (2009), issue 1.

Previously I have also written about science and media in a historical perspective and school science. Between 2013 and 2018 I am affiliated with the research program ”Science and Modernization in Sweden”. See the program website here: http://vetenskapshistoria.wordpress.com