Research projects

Gothenburg’s 1968: Stories from a Working-class City in Movement

This project within oral history deals with the 68 movement in Gothenburg, meaning the activism of the political left in the 1960s and 70s. The aim is to carry out an extensive, systematic gathering of interview materials from contemporary activists, coming from a range of political parties and organisations. The effort will generate a unique source material, and in doing so, make way for groundbreaking research concerning the driving forces behind – and the conditions surrounding – the massive, collective mobilisation that took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s. There is a particular focus on highlighting the contributions and perspectives of individuals and groups who are currently underrepresented in existing archive collections, meaning grassroots in general, and women in particular.

The project Göteborgs 1968: Stories from a Working-class City in Movement is different from previous research, in its focus both on oral sources and on the Gothenburg activism. Today, the 68 movement of the city is still virtually unresearched. Meanwhile, more recent literature with ties to the 400th anniversary of the city has sought to highlight the thorough changes the city underwent in the 1960s and 70s, as well as Gothenburg’s leading role within the Swedish political left. The connections between the women’s movement and the left in these years holds a particular interest. Oral history makes it possible to shift our focus to the local grassroots of what was still a genuine workers’ town, and relate their hopes and ambitions to a global left-wing movement. 

As part of the project, the archive of Svenska Kvinnors Vänsterförbund is now being organised and registered; an archive that serves as a vital component in understanding the long-term activism of the left throughout the 20th century, as well as the women’s role in upholding left-wing activism during the Cold War.

The project is now in year two, and we have begun interviewing 68ers. Were you a part of the 68 movement, and would you be interested in participating in the project? If so, please contact us.

Martin Linde (martin.linde@history.gu.se)
Rachel Pierce (rachel.pierce@ub.gu.se)
Martin Öhman (martin.ohman@gu.se)

• Project period: 2024-
• Organisation: Dept. of Historical Studies and KvinnSam
• Funding: The Anna Ahrenberg Fund
• Contact: Rachel Pierce (rachel.pierce@ub.gu.se)

To the project's web page 

The future of women’s and gender research?

Swedish archival institutions today are confronted with a number of important challenges. Many of these are connected to the digitization of society, a shift that changes what an archive is and undermines long-standing archival traditions, not least for personal archives and social movements. At the same time, current expressions of activism exist in new forms and formats. A substantial part of today’s activism happens online, in social media and other digital channels, a fact that challenges past paper-based archival standards and practices. These shifts have a profound impact on how activists work, for the documentation they produce, and for how this information can be handled. Given this set of changes, it is enormously important for current archival institutions to improve their understanding of their field, as well as constructing routines for the collection, preservation, and creation of access for digital material.

For institutions focused on women’s and gender history, this situation is even more complicated. Anna Nordenstam’s study “Gender and archives” (2008), financed by the Swedish Scientific Council, worked to prepare the ground for the development of tools for collecting, describing, and making accessible archives important to women’s and gender history. But since this study was published, no follow-ups to Nordenstam’s proposals – new archival portals, a network, and principles for cataloguing and sorting materials – have been financed. In the meantime, scholars and archivists have become increasingly awareness of the need to problematize ”the obtuse concept woman” (Pihl Skog 2022). All institutions that work with material related to women’s and gender history must thoroughly consider a number of important, existential questions. How can archives adapt to developments in women’s and gender history that highlight the importance of inclusivity and queer perspectives? Which donations should be prioritized, in order to ensure the future of archives-based women’s and gender research? How should acquisitions work, given that activism increasingly is visible via and exists on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter/X? This data is owned by commercial actors, at the same time that it seems to clearly be an important part of women’s and gender history.

The goal of this project is to create a network composed of researchers and cultural heritage workers, with a focus on framing women’s and gender history as a whole, in order to get at questions of future collection and preservation of women’s and gender historical materials. A network of this kind will generate knowledge useful to all Swedish archival institutions, given that all these institutions must work now to lay the bed for future research. The project’s base is KvinnSam, the National Library for Gender Studies and university-wide research infrastructure. KvinnSam has a unique position in Sweden, as well as internationally. The institution has a multifaceted mission that includes primary support for Swedish women’s and gender research as well as the collection, preservation, and provision of access for the country’s only women’s and gender-based archival collections.

Rachel Pierce (rachel.pierce@ub.gu.se)

Maria Cavallin-Aijmer (maria.cavallin@history.gu.se)

• Project period: 2024-2025
• Organizational home: KvinnSam
• Funding: Riksarkivet, Stiftelsen Riksarkivarie Ingvar Anderssons fond
• Contact: Rachel Pierce (rachel.pierce@ub.gu.se)
• Collaboration partners: Kvinnohistoriskt museum, Stockholms kvinnohistoriska, Queerrörelsens arkiv och bibliotek

Demokrati100: Women and citizenship. Digitising the archive of Kvinnliga Medborgarskolan vid Fogelstad

This project, with funding from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, focuses on digitising and making accessible the archive of Kvinnliga Medborgarskolan vid Fogelstad. The archive is of particular importance for how women understood and worked to enter the public discourse in Sweden in the years following the success of the suffrage movement in 1919. Kvinnliga Medborgarskolan vid Fogelstad was active during 1925-1954 and held spring, autumn and summer courses. The school also ran continuation courses.

The archive contains material from the establishment of the school and material from the courses, such as minutes from the association's meetings, lectures, photographs, and more. The school courses covered a wide range of traditional subjects such as history, social studies and psychology, practical civic education, choral singing, gymnastics and rhythmics. A number of well-known figures in Swedish women's history were closely associated with the school's development and governance, including the school's founders Elisabeth Tamm, Kerstin Hesselgren, Elin Wägner, Ada Nilsson and Honorine Hermelin. Guest speakers included Siri Derkert, Emilia Fogelklou and Alexandra Kollontay. 2025 will mark the centenary of the school.

The project will include digitisation of the material in the archive, application of metadata and possibly transcriptions as time permits. We will publish copyright-free material in the Alvin platform and material that is not free to publish will be made available on a computer in the special reading room at the Humanities Library at the Gothenburg University Library for on-site study. The project will also produce a visualisation of the Fogelstad archive's connections in the KvinnSam archives, given its impact on KvinnSam's archival holdings during its development in the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, we aim to create modules for a selection of digitised material, framed with context and providing new entry points into the suffrage movement and its aftermath for how women understood full citizenship in Sweden in the first half of the 20th century.

Are you interested in the archival material that has already been digitised? Here you can find digitised archival material on the Alvin platform

Are you a researcher interested in contributing or using these digitised documents? Get in touch with us!

• Project period: 2024-2025
• Funding: The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation
• Contact: AnnaLena Berguist (anna.lena.bergquist@ub.gu.se)

The Swedish Women's Biographical Dictionary, SKBL

The SKBL was conducted as a project in two steps, 2016–2018 and 2019–2021. The project received funding from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation and was managed by Lisbeth Larsson and Maria Sjöberg of the University of Gothenburg. The online dictionary currently includes over 2 000 Swedish women (and women of other nationality active in Sweden), who have all contributed to the development of society in different years and in various ways.

KvinnSam took part in the project by providing, among other things, indexing, reference and source management, and proof editing. The database and dictionary are now part of the KvinnSam resources, meaning there is ongoing work with additions and corrections. The database is managed by Språkbanken. 

KvinnSam has many years of experience in assisting with systematic literature searches and methodological support for various types of research reviews in our field. Here you will find a list of published reviews in which librarians from KvinnSam have participated.