Jag har sedan 2019 undervisat på följande kurser: 

• World economic history (delkurs på International Business and Politics (IBP) programmet i samarbete med Företagsekonomiska- och Statsvetenskapliga institutionen)
• Economic thought in world history (IBP-programmet)
• Tankar om ekonomin på Ekonomisk historia I
• Stora omvandlingar på Ekonomisk historia II
• Självständigt arbete i ekonomisk historia på Ekonomisk historia II
• Jag är också handledare för kandidat- och masteruppsatser samt tredje handledare åt Susanne Berghofer som arbetar med en avhandling om arbetsgivarorganisationerna inom den svenska teko-industrin under efterkrigstiden. 

Forskningsintressen

• Konsumtions- och marknadsföringshistoria
• Den historiska utvecklingen och regleringen av marknader
• Betydelsen av idéer och normer för marknaders legitimitet
• Svenska näringslivet och Europamarknaden
• Marknadisering och nyliberalism 

Under höstterminen 2023 var jag associerad forskare vid Centre of International History and Political Studies of Globalization på Universitet i Lausanne i Schweiz. Jag har även varit visiting scholar på the European Institute vid Columbia University i New York. Jag var koordinator i forskningsprogrammet Neoliberalism in the Nordics vid Uppsala Universitet 2021–2024, nu är jag associerad forskare till programmet. Jag är medgrundare till det det svenska Reklamhistoriska nätverket som startade 2017.

Min avhandling Sound and loyal business. The history of the Swedish advertising cartel 1915-1965, var en av tre avhandlingar som var nominerade till priset för bästa avhandling i business history under perioden januari 2018 till och med januari 2022, som delas ut av the European Business History Association i Madrid, Spanien 22-24 juni 2022. 

Tillsammans med Klara Arnberg arbetar jag sedan hösten 2024 med en internationell antologi om konsumtions- och marknadsföringshistoria: ‘Have it Your Way’: Marketing expertise and consumer culture from the oil crisis to the dot-com bubble med planerad publicering 2026. 

 

Forskningsprojekt

Under perioden 2022–2025 har jag ett treårigt postdokprojekt som Wallanderstipendiat med titeln: "Marknadsmakarna. Reklamens roll i den samhällsekonomiska omvandlingen i Sverige ca 1970-2000". 

Jag har nyligen deltagit i följande forskningsprojekt:

2020–2022. The market of self-realization (Självförverkligandets marknad: Svensk korrespondens- och distansutbildning, 1890–1970-tal), finansierat av Jan Wallanders och Tom Hedelius Stiftelse. Projektet var kopplat till ekonomisk-historiska institutionen på Uppsala Universitet.

2021–2023. 'Understanding international cartels in the 20th century: tracing size and scope', finansierat av Jan Wallanders och Tom Hedelius Stiftelse. 

 

Utvalda publikationer

Åström Rudberg, Elin, kommande. "Lifestyle Research and the Making of the Sovereign Consumer in Late Twentieth-Century Sweden", Contemporary European History. 

Husz, Orsi, Larsson Heidenblad David, Åström Rudberg, Elin, kommande. "Wage-earners, taxpayers or everyman capitalists? The making of a mutual fund culture in Sweden” i Andersson J. & Howell C. (red.), Nordic Neoliberalisms, Routledge.

Innset, Ola & Åström Rudberg, Elin (2024). "Varieties of marketization: Introducing a new framework for the study of market reforms in Nordic welfare states", in special issue on Capitalism and the "Nordic model" in Nordic Welfare Studies. 

Åström Rudberg, Elin (2023). “Satsa på dig själv! Näringslivets politiska marknadsföring mot ungdomar på 1970-talet” (Invest in yourself! Organized business’ political marketing towards youth in the 1970s), in Andersson, Jenny, Husz, Orsi, Glover, Nikolas & Larsson Heidenblad, David (eds.), Marknadens Tid (The Market Era), Nordic Academic Press.

Åström Rudberg, Elin & Husz, Orsi (2023), "The technicians of consumer society: The creation of advertising men and practical advertising knowledge in early twentieth-century Sweden", Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JHRM-11-2022-0032/full/html (open access).

Åström Rudberg, Elin (2022), "Doing business in the schools of the welfare state: Competing ‘entrepreneurial selves’ and the roots of entrepreneurship education in 1980s Sweden", Enterprise & Society, https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2022.26 (open access)

Åström Rudberg Elin & Kuorelahti, Elina (2021), “We have a prodigious amount in common”. Reappraising Americanization and circulation of knowledge in the interwar Nordic advertising industry, Business History, https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2021.1991915 (open access). 

 

I urval från Stockholms universitets publikationsdatabas

• Lifestyle Research and the Making of the Sovereign Consumer in Late Twentieth-Century Sweden

  2025. Elin Åström Rudberg. Contemporary European History, 1-18

  Artikel

  This article discusses the development of lifestyle and value studies in the market research industry in relation to changing understandings of the consumer in late twentieth-century Sweden. It uses the analytical notion of the ‘sovereign consumer’ to argue that the market research industry both exploited and reinforced this perception of consumers through lifestyles as a means for categorisation. The analysis draws on material from the leading Swedish market research company at the time, Sifo, including its connections to the European industry. The results show how the industry sought to break up the supposedly homogenous postwar Swedish consumption landscape by constructing new consumer types that suited a more market-oriented society, and it was the confident, individualised consumer who sought self-fulfilment that was portrayed as the most attractive type. The article argues that the politics of marketing and advertising played an important part in shaping Swedish consumer culture during the market turn.

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• Wage Earners, Taxpayers or Everyman Capitalists? The Making of a Mutual Fund Culture in Sweden

  2025. Orsi Husz, David Larsson Heidenblad, Elin Åström Rudberg. Nordic Neoliberalisms

  Kapitel

  This chapter explains how a mutual fund culture, which strengthened the link between households and the stock market, emerged exceptionally early in Sweden. We explore the popularisation of individual shareholding through state-subsidised fund savings schemes, the Tax Funds (introduced by the centre-right government in 1978) and the similar Everyman’s Funds (introduced by the Social Democratic government in 1984). Although initially politically controversial, these programmes ultimately paved the way for a seemingly mundane investment culture. Through this case we argue that neoliberalisation in Sweden involved the creation of hybrid subjects that combined older forms of identification rooted in a welfare statist culture (the wage earner and the taxpayer) with identity positions associated with a new everyday capitalist identity. One explanation for the exceptional Swedish development lies in the turmoil surrounding the so-called wage-earner funds with individual share ownership posited as an alternative to the collectively owned funds. In the other Nordic countries, the conflict between labour and capital was less intense. One fallout of this conflict in Sweden was a nation of everyman investors.

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• Varieties of Marketization: Introducing a new Framework for the Study of Market Reforms in Nordic Welfare States

  2024. Ola Innset, Elin Åström Rudberg. Nordisk välfärdsforskning | Nordic Welfare Research 9 (1), 11-27

  Artikel

  The article develops a new framework for the study ofmarket reforms in Nordic welfare states based on a divi-sion between “markets”, “quasi-markets” and “pseudo-markets”. The two latter types of marketization have been themost common, and the article exemplifies them by revisiting the early 1990s Swedish school reform, “Friskolere-formen”—which instigated a quasi-market for publicly funded schools run by both for-profit companies and non-profit actors—and the Norwegian hospital reform, “Foretaksreformen” of 2001—which created what we call a pseu-do-market, in which public hospitals were reorganized to mimic the structures of capitalist enterprise. By discussingthe different reforms in relation to justification, the typeof welfare state sector, and the political orientation of thegovernment implementing the reform, our study sheds new light on similarities and differences in marketizationprocesses in the Nordics. Particularly, we find that the justification for the reforms differed, with the Swedish reformbeing justified in ideological terms and the Norwegian in technocratic terms. Contrary to some literature, we holdthat marketization has fundamentally altered Nordic welfare states and the relationship between capital and societyin the Nordics, and we suggest that our framework could be used for future comparative studies of market reforms.

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• ‘We have a prodigious amount in common’: Reappraising Americanisation and circulation of knowledge in the interwar Nordic advertising industry

  2024. Elin Åström Rudberg, Elina Kuorelahti. Business History 66 (1), 241-263

  Artikel

  This article discusses the interwar collaboration in the Nordic advertising industry in relation to the literature on ‘Americanisation’ in advertising and business history. We argue that the focus on Americanisation has caused research to overlook other important arenas for sharing knowledge in the development of advertising and commercial practices in twentieth-century Europe. We show the importance of the systematic collaboration between advertising communities in the Nordic countries through which Anglo-Saxon ideas, as well as domestic experiences, were shared. The collaboration was a crucial platform for the advertising industry to achieve increased societal clout. We also find that the Nordic advertising industry, as a collective, clearly distanced themselves from continental Europe based on a perception that Anglo-Saxon and Nordic advertising shared the same foundations. The results raise questions concerning assumptions about Americanisation and the role of alternative sources of inspiration and transnational collaboration in advertising history.

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• The technicians of consumer society: the creation of advertising men and practical advertising knowledge in early twentieth-century Sweden

  2023. Elin Åström Rudberg, Orsi Husz. Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 15 (2), 77-97

  Artikel

  Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate an unexplored part of advertising history; namely, the education of a large, mundane, nonelite group of advertising professionals, so-called advertising technicians and the knowledge they acquired. Examining correspondence courses in the technology of advertising, we focus particularly on the production of technified knowledge and mass personas.

  Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on a qualitative analysis of course material from Sweden’s two largest correspondence schools in the 1930s and 1940s. Two theoretical concepts guide the analysis: the concept of market devices and the notion of personas, both of which we use to show how the courses crafted a particular kind of advertising professional as well as knowledge.

  Findings: The study shows that courses created a template-based persona of the advertising technician, who possessed what we call bounded originality characterized by diligence, modesty and rule-governed creative imagination. Similarly, the courses created a body of knowledge that was controllable and highly practice-oriented. The advertising technician was expected to embody and internalize the advertising knowledge, thus, becoming an extension of this knowledge on the market.

  Originality/value: By directing the searchlight at the cadre of ordinary, middle-class advertising professionals instead of the high-profile “advertising creatives” and innovators, the paper brings to the foreground the nonelite level of the advertising industry. These practitioners went to work in the business world to produce the everyday advertising that was not necessarily groundbreaking but was needed in a growing mass-consumption society.

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• Doing Business in the Schools of the Welfare State: Competing “Entrepreneurial Selves” and the Roots of Entrepreneurship Education in 1980s Sweden

  2022. Elin Åström Rudberg. Enterprise & society

  Artikel

  This article concerns the rise of young entrepreneurship education programs in 1980s Sweden, which entered schools surprisingly early and quickly, backed by organized Swedish business. The increased popularity of entrepreneurship education toward the end of the twentieth century in many European welfare states is usually associated with a shift toward neoliberal, market-oriented, policies. It is argued here that an important reason for young entrepreneurship’s success was its ability to connect with the Swedish tradition of cooperation and democratic decision making, in combination with values such as individualism and competition. A case in point is the surprising compatibility between progressive pedagogical ideas and “neoliberal” entrepreneurialism. The article is based on a study of Ung Företagsamhet (Young Entrepreneurship, henceforth UF), the Swedish version of the American organization Junior Achievement, and the ambition of the consumer cooperative movement’s think tank, Koopi, to offer a different kind of entrepreneurship education. In the analysis, the concept of “the entrepreneurial self” is applied to these two different programs, and the results show how they clashed, but also overlapped, in ways that help explain the success of UF. The article is a contribution to our understanding of how entrepreneurship discourse emerged and manifested itself in everyday environments in the late twentieth century, and as such also contributes to the history of Nordic neoliberalism.

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• The rise of entrepreneurship in Swedish schools

  2022. Elin Åström Rudberg.

  Övrigt

  Entrepreneurship training was introduced in selected Swedish high schools already in 1980 and has since gained a strong position in the school system. In order to understand this development, we need to examine how the discourse of entrepreneurialism was connected to key tenets of the welfare state (such as progressive educational ideals) as well as neoliberal ideas.

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