Maja Hultman

Postdoctor

Department of Historical Studies

Telephone

+46 31-786 65 81

Mail

maja.hultman@gu.se

Visiting address

Renströmsgatan 6

41255 Göteborg

Postal address

Box 200

40530 Göteborg

About Maja Hultman

I am a cultural historian with expertise in European Jewish history, modern urban history, the history of emotions, and cultural heritage. My research revolves around emotions of European urban life, past and present, specifically through the lens of Jewish history. I use spatial, digital (GIS), architectural and history of emotions methods to analyse the role of urban space for internal hierarchies of minorities and cultural majority/minority intersections. Since my PhD in History from the University of Southampton (2019) I have concentrated on developing a combined spatial-emotional method to explore minority experiences of the modern urban landscape.

My postdoctoral position is jointly placed at CERGU (Centre for European Research) and the Department of Historical Studies. I have held the David-Herzog-Fonds Guest Professorship at the University of Graz (2025), a research fellowship at the Centre for Business History in Stockholm (2021-22), and a doctoral fellowship at the Leibniz-Institute of European History in Mainz (2019). I am co-editor of Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal, co-founder of the research group History of Emotions in the Built Environment (HEBE), and am currently co-running the project All the Feels: Urban Histories of Emotion and Experience with Dr Anneleen Arnout at Radboud University.

I teach at undergraduate and graduate levels in History, European Studies, and Cultural Heritage. My courses and lectures mostly focus on historical methodology, urban history, Jewish studies and museum studies, sometimes with perspectives from digital humanities.

My current research projects are:

The Effects of the Shoah on European Jewish Business Networks and Cultural Mobility

My postdoc-project explores transnational cultural-economic networks before and after the Holocaust through the prism of two Swedish-Jewish business families. It illuminates the cultural effects of ethnic genocide in one European nation by exploring the minority's cultural development in other parts of Europe.

Jewish Feelings in the City: Emotional Topography and Power Relations in modern Stockholm

The doctoral thesis from 2019 emphasises the city's fundamental role in influencing the Jewish community's settlement patterns, internal cultural infrastructure, and construction of public buildings when making themselves at home after emancipation. I use emotional analysis in the coming book to further explore the social dynamics that shaped the relationship between the city's physical form and Jewish internal hierarchies.