Stockholm university

Worldviews, Ethics and Philosophy

Ethics, philosophy and worldviews - to understand morality and the big questions of life.

What is right and wrong, and how should we live our lives? Research in ethics and philosophy explores the fundamental questions of morality, human nature and our relationship with the world. By studying different worldviews and philosophical systems of thought, we can understand how we shape values and behaviors, both individually and collectively.

Socialantropologi

News

Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

The reading group of Speculative Fiction during fall semester 2025

On November 13th the reading group of Speculative Fiction within the open seminar series of the Master's Programme in Environmental Humanities will have it's third meeting of fall semester 2025. It is lead by professor Andrew Jones, Department of Archaeology and Classical studies and Elisa Viteri Márquez, PhD student at the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.

Climate and Environment - Theme page Language, Literature and Culture - Theme page Worldviews, Ethics and Philosophy - Theme page History, Archeology and Cultural Heritage - Theme page
Four women sit and kneel on a grassy field, engaging in an outdoor learning activity.
Department of Environmental Science

Stockholm University to host new international Master’s programme in climate, environment and energy

Stockholm University is proud to announce the launch of an innovative international Master's Programme in Transdisciplinary Studies of Climate, Environment and Energy (TRACEE), coordinated by the Department of Environmental Science and developed as an integral part of the CIVIS University Alliance.

Climate and Environment - Theme page Society, Democracy and Welfare - Theme page Sustainable Chemistry - Theme page Worldviews, Ethics and Philosophy - Theme page Social and economic sustainability - Theme page Health and Living Conditions - Theme page Economy and Society - Theme page
Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

New article: "Neoliberal Globalization Claims another Victory in Post-Communist Albania"

Isa Blumi, Associate professor and docent at Stockholm University has written a new article published in Frank Cibulka and Zachary T. Irwin (eds.) Liberals, Conservatives, and Mavericks: On Christian Churches of Eastern Europe since 1980.

History, Archeology and Cultural Heritage - Theme page Society, Democracy and Welfare - Theme page Worldviews, Ethics and Philosophy - Theme page
Helene Frowe

Exploring the ethics of deterrence

Are we allowed to form defensive alliances even if this makes our neighbors worse off? May we install a surveillance camera on our home even if this makes a burglar more likely to break in next door? Can deterrence be a legitimate motive for war? Philosopher Helen Frowe is examining the ethical aspects of deterrence, giving us better tools to determine whether or not a given method of deterrence is acceptable.

Society, Democracy and Welfare - Theme page Worldviews, Ethics and Philosophy - Theme page

Sweden's first Master's programme in Environmental Humanities inaugurated

The university's exhibition space Accelerator was at capacity when the Master's Programme in Environmental Humanities was inaugurated on 5 September. Students, visitors, colleagues and researchers from several departments and other universities came together.

Climate and Environment - Theme page Culture and Media - Theme page Gender and Equality - Theme page History, Archeology and Cultural Heritage - Theme page Society, Democracy and Welfare - Theme page Social and economic sustainability - Theme page Worldviews, Ethics and Philosophy - Theme page Plants, Animals and Nature - Theme page
Picture of Jonas Tallberg presenting SCGG
Stockholm Center on Global Governance

SCGG at the Swedish Research Council’s first network meeting for Centers of Excellence

Professor and SCGG co-director Jonas Tallberg gave a presentation to introduce the SCGG at the Swedish Research Council’s first network meeting for Centers of Excellence. The event was held on March 7, at Piperska Muren, Stockholm.

Society, Democracy and Welfare - Theme page International Relations and Migration - Theme page Psychology and Human Behaviour - Theme page Worldviews, Ethics and Philosophy - Theme page History, Archeology and Cultural Heritage - Theme page Law, Crime and Justice - Theme page
Department of Environmental Science

Environmental Science Research Day 2024: A call to arms for academia and activists alike

In an ambitious gathering of 170 participants, organized by the Department of Environmental Science and the Bolin Centre for Climate Research, the Aula Magna auditorium played host to the Environmental Science Research Day on 1 February 2024.

Atmosphere and Weather - Theme page Climate and Environment - Theme page Health and Living Conditions - Theme page Plants, Animals and Nature - Theme page Oceans and Lakes - Theme page SciLifeLab - Theme page Sustainable Chemistry - Theme page Worldviews, Ethics and Philosophy - Theme page Society, Democracy and Welfare - Theme page Chemistry - Theme page Economy and Society - Theme page
Mars perseverance debris
Department of Environmental Science

Crafting “a New Song” for Mars and Beyond

As governments and private entities prepare to send humans to Mars, the mission brings significant environmental challenges. While the logistics of sustaining life on the Red Planet have been studied extensively, there's a notable gap regarding the impact of chemicals and materials used during human exploration.

Astronomy and Cosmology - Theme page Health and Living Conditions - Theme page Sustainable Chemistry - Theme page Plants, Animals and Nature - Theme page Life Science - Theme page Climate and Environment - Theme page Oceans and Lakes - Theme page Worldviews, Ethics and Philosophy - Theme page
Two female muslims walking down the street.
Department of Sociology

Immigrants who experience discrimination are less likely to vote

Immigrants who are active in religious organizations in Sweden are less likely to participate in politics compared to immigrants who are not active in such organizations, a new PhD study from Stockholm University shows. Those who have experienced societal discrimination based on religion are even less likely to participate in politics or to vote. The greatest impact is seen among Muslims in Sweden.

Society, Democracy and Welfare - Theme page Worldviews, Ethics and Philosophy - Theme page International Relations and Migration - Theme page
Department of Social Anthropology

Collecting, saving and securing seeds has become a global concern

Seedways - The circulation, control and care of plants in a warming world is a book about seeds and why and how seeds matter today, as in the past. In a historical perspective the co-evolution of plants and humans can be traced through myths, rituals and cultural practices. In our present-day world of accelerating climate change, expansion of monocultural plantations and loss of biodiversity, collecting, saving and securing seeds has become a global concern.

Worldviews, Ethics and Philosophy - Theme page Climate and Environment - Theme page
Department of Culture and Aesthetics

"Entangled memories of violence", new article by Victoria Fareld

In a new article in the journal Memory Studies (16/2 2021), Victoria Fareld, associate professor in History of Ideas, Stockholm University, analyzes how the Austrian writer Jean Améry formulates his memories of the Holocaust in the contemporaneous situation of decolonisation.

History, Archeology and Cultural Heritage - Theme page Worldviews, Ethics and Philosophy - Theme page Culture and Media - Theme page
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Events

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Research projects

A logical account of questions in inquiry

Consider a detective who investigates a burglary. She is faced by a number of pressing questions: How did the burglar get in? What was stolen? Is the strange mark on the floor a footprint from the culprit?

Bioethics and Political Philosophy: Nordic Perspectives

Bioethics and Political Philosophy: Nordic Perspectives is a workshop series that brings together philosophers, bioethicists, and other researchers from Nordic and Baltic countries whose work is at the intersection of bioethics and political philosophy.

Causation as a secondary quality

In spite of its centrality, the notion of causation has resisted unified treatment. Attempts at general theories of causation have failed to account for some range of cases of causation. The project investigates whether causation can be understood as a “secondary" relation, identifying means to ends has as its function to track.

EXTREMUM

The goal of thid cross-disciplinary collaboration is to design and implement a novel data management and analytics framework for medical data sources. The focus is on explainable machine learning methods as well as on legal and ethical aspects of the predictive models.

Anatomic model of a heart
Education and other journeys

This dissertation challenges the common idea that education is mainly a tool for achieving specific, predetermined goals. It highlights how this instrumental view can limit the meaning of education, reducing it to a set of outcomes rather than exploring its deeper significance in human life.

Young woman lying on her back in a park reading a book.
Ethics and Values in educational data-driven practices

This project explores the growing datafication of the education sector in the Nordic countries. Our exploration is concretized through a workshop series. We focus on dimensions of ethics and values embedded in emerging sociotechnical imaginaries of education and learning.

Genre photo: Three students sitting by their laptops.
Ethics of coordination

As the recent fiery debates about ‘flight shame’ and ‘meat shame’ illustrate, there is no clear and convincing ethical account of who has a duty to do exactly what with respect to climate change.

Federated Health: A Nordic Federated Health Data Network

Electronic health records are full of important information about diagnoses and treatments of patients. Sharing this information in a federated health data network, across hospitals in the Nordic countries, will improve the quality of health care.

Genre photo: Lots of medicine in different colors in a person’s hand.
Health Bank de-identification tool and its practical use

The aim of this project is to enable the practical use of methods for de-identification of clinical free text written in Swedish. The HB Deid tool will be tested on textual patient data from Region Stockholm and not only in a laboratory environment at Stockholm University.

Genre photo: Stethoscope, pen and paper. Photo: Teerawut Masawat/Mostphotos.
Knowledge Resistance: Causes, Consequences and Cures

The main objective of this ambitious cross-disciplinary program is to investigate the nature and causes of knowledge resistance, the tendency not to accept available knowledge. This represents the first concerted effort to provide a unified framework within which to investigate knowledge resistance, going beyond the state of the art on several levels.

The Foundations of Epistemic Normativity

Many of us think that we ought to believe in anthropogenic climate change, that our belief is justified given the evidence and that climate-change skepticism is not rationally permitted. The project aims at clarifying normative claims concerning what we ought, are justified, or are permitted to believe.

The Moral Demands of Equality in Aging Societies

The aim of the project is to understand the demands of equality in aging societies. Aging will change substantially the age composition of the populations of developed countries, and it raises challenges for maintaining and promoting equality between age groups and generations.

The Stat Sovereignty and Its Limits – a Legal Genetic Study

Dissertation project aimed at examining the relationship between the two legal principles (qui iure and sic utere) which are usually considered to define 1. territorial state sovereignty and 2. the limits to this sovereignty imposed by the international law of borders.

Research
When punishment is drifting: A rights-based account of parental imprisonment

The research project focuses on the ethics of imprisonment. I critically examine prisoners right to privacy, the harm caused to families and children of prisoners, prisoners voting rights and medical treatment for prisoners with ADHD. My thesis has already received important international recognition among researchers as well as practioneers.

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Research groups

Children, Migration and Integration

In 2016, the Human Science Academic Area (HSAA) introduced a specific interdisciplinary initiative directed towards the themes of Children, Migration and Integration (CMI), an initiative to which the Vice-Chancellor had granted funds.

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Critical Studies on Technology in Education and Society (TES)

Emerging technologies, such as algorithmic decision-making, surveillance tools, and generative artificial intelligence (AI), are examples of technologies expected to significantly impact the education sector. To what extent do current university studies prepare students for AI? In what way do they educate students for an AI-mediated future workplace?

Students and book shelves at Copenhagen Business School.
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MOB – Meta-research on bilingualism

The researchers in this group are united by a shared interest in research on bilingualism research. We analyze scientific fields such as bi- and multilingualism research and Swedish as a Second language with a view of grasping, for example, patterns of recruitment or the histories of central concepts and their effects within and beyond the fields.

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Narratives: form and function

The research group Narratives: form and function takes an interest in stories and narrative from different times and places – from medieval legislative texts to contemporary lifestyle blogs – and aims at understanding why and how we choose to narrate.

Silhouette of cartoon gangster and two pigs.
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