Postdoctoral Projects
The Centre for European Research (CERGU) is a network-based European research environment at the University of Gothenburg, which means that researchers are connected to CERGU, but employed at their own home departments. Postdoctoral researchers, who are financed by CERGU, are active within the CERGU network and at their home departments.
From Displacement to Integration: The Economic Integration of Forced Migrants in the Balkans (1945-2010)
Members: Luka Miladinović
Period: 2024-2026
Funding: CERGU
The research aims to explore the economic consequences of forced migrations in the Balkans, focusing on two significant waves of displacement. By analyzing the displacement of Italians from Yugoslavian territories in the aftermath of World War II and the forced migration of Serbs from Kosovo in 1999, this study seeks to provide valuable insights into the economic integration of forced migrants and the impact on labor markets in both the regions of origin and destination. Utilizing newly acquired archival material and microdata, econometric analysis will be employed to assess various outcomes, including occupational status, earnings, and employment rates. The findings will contribute to the understanding of the socioeconomic implications of compelled migrations, offer comparisons to existing literature, and provide historical and contemporary insights applicable to various disciplines within European studies.
The Age of Apology: Contemporary Re-evaluations of European Colonialism
Members: Louise Schou Therkildsen
Period: 2023-2025
Funding: CERGU
Project description: The project examines post-colonial reconciliation processes in Europe at the state level – official apologies and the wider context of investigations and truth commissions. I will focus on, among other things, the role of the Nordic countries in a European context and the various discursive frameworks and norms that govern the various reconciliation processes as well as the significance of ceremony and ritual in the context of reconciliation.
The Impact of Shoah on European-Jewish Business Networks and Cultural Mobility
Members: Maja Hultman
Period: 2021-2024 (part-time)
Funding: CERGU
Project description: Retracing the transnational movements of two Swedish-Jewish business families, and their subsequent migration of cultural ideas between diasporas and across national borders, the project The Impact of the Shoah on European-Jewish Business Networks and Cultural Mobility examines the function, disappearance and/or change of Jewish cultural centres in Europe, influencing Swedish-Jewish life, from the 1910s to the 1970s. It studies the period before, during, and after the Shoah , and thus examines the impact of Christendomʹs antisemitism –annihilating six million Jewish souls and European-Jewish cultural centres in the 1940s – on Jewish belonging to Europe. With an interdisciplinary approach – using business history, cultural studies, comparative studies, and gender studies – the project shows how firstly, European Jews used transnational structures to collaborate on cultural developments, and secondly, discriminating jurisdiction against an ethnic minority within one European nation potentially informs the ethnic group’s cultural practices in other parts of Europe.