Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: In 2021, the Åbo Akademi University was celebrating a hundred-year-old university chair of the Nordic Ethnology, or the Kiseleff Professorship, after the donator Feodor Kiseleff, a wholesaler.This centennial publication is not an ordinary history of a university chair, but a life-story, writes Professor Fredrik Nilsson (435).It is to draw a picture of the birth, metamorphoses, and permanent traditions of the university subject.Like life-stories in general, it creates history, although, the picture of the past is selective and inaccurate.Instead, the features of continuity and constant forward movement in space and time emerge.The starting points for discussions are the available facts, memories and experiences of students, doctoral students, researchers, archive personnel and professors, as the editors, Fredrik Nilsson, and Professor Emerita Anna-Maria Åström write (8).The book is divided into three sections, consisting of twenty-one articles including the preface and after-words.At the end of the book, fifteen authors are presented.The first section, 'Development and everyday life of the university subject,' covers the history of the university chair including the professors in successive order, establishing the archives and archival practises, the emergence of research specializations and transformations in education.Moreover, the connections to the general development of ethnology in Finland, to related institutions and associations, and to the colleagues in European and Nordic countries, explicit in Sweden, are discussed.Fredrik Nilsson, and Anna-Maria Åström, or both together, have drafted most articles in the chapter.Moreover, Professor Nils Storå discusses how ethnology in Finland developed along five paths; Ph.L. Katja Hellman and Docent Sanna Lillbroända-Annala are discussing the meaning of students first field work and Doctoral Student Ann-Helen Sund ethnological dissertations.In the second section, 'Interfaces and collaborations,' development issues are discussed through the relationship between ethnology and related activities.
Source: Ethnologia Fennica
Author: Ulla Kallberg
Institution: University of Turku
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4402564700