University of Gothenburg
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Helena Holgersson

SENIOR LECTURER

Culture
Unit
Telephone
+46 31-786 27 80
Mail
helena.holgersson@kultur.gu.se
Visiting address
Renströmsgatan 6
41255 Göteborg
Room number
3247
Postal address
Box 200
405 30 Göteborg

About Helena Holgersson

Helena Holgersson, post-doc in Cultural Studies. In the spring of 2011 she defended her Ph.D. thesis in Sociology, Icke-medborgarskapets urbana geografi (The Urban Geography of Non-citizenship). In its presentation of the thesis, the publisher Glänta produktion writes:

”Hidden refugees, undocumented, illegals – behind the terms you find people for whom neither the welfare state nor the post-industrial city has room. How does society deal with their presence and how do they themselves navigate through, and organize their lives in, public space? Focusing on Gothenburg, a city characterized by both growth and segregation, a city that is trying to attract certain new residents but not others, Holgersson lets the double exposure of the city mirror a society that is falling apart.”

Ongoing Research Project

Urban Redevelopment as City Branding, Gentrification and Enchantment Engineering. The case of ‘Centrala Älvstaden’ in Gothenburg, Sweden. (Follow the link for a full project description)

Teaching

Helena is the course leader of the unit The Post-industrial City in the course Scandinavian Studies: Cultural and Social Perspectives, and also teaches in the courses Studying Our Time and Culture and Democracy and the City in Culture, Bachelor's programme, in the master degree programme The Practical Field of Culture, and in undergraduate courses in Cultural Studies.

At the Department of Sociology she has previously taught courses such as Social Control in Contemporary Society, Qualitative Methods, Alienation, Exlusion and Modernity: Cultural Sociological Perspectives and Living in Europe: Work, Welfare and Family.

Collaboration

During her time as a Ph.D. student, Helena was part of the interdisciplinary research group Gothenburg Research on Asylum-Seeking Children in Europe (GRACE) at the University of Gothenburg Centre for European Research (CERGU).

In the autumn of 2008–09, she visited the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths College in London, a stay that was funded by a scholarship from The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT). She is one of the editors of the interdisciplinary anthology (Re)searching Gothenburg, which was published in connection with the World Congress of Sociology in Gothenburg in 2010.

At the Department of Cultural Sciences, Helena works with FSSK (the Forum for Studies of Contemporary Culture), a series of public seminars which involves co-operation with local cultural institutions such as the Gothenburg City Museum and The Backa Theatre. She is also the editor of the blog London Riots at the webpage of the cultural journal Ord&bild, and there she reflects upon how the riots in the summer of 2011 are being analyzed and the role of academics in these kinds of processes.