Updated 21 February 2025. Please note that the programme is preliminary and subject to change. We will update the schedule as necessary and notify registered participants of any significant changes.
WEDNESDAY 7 MAY
9.15-10.30 Opening words and Keynote 1
• Klaus Petersen (University of Southern Denmark): Social Democracy and Nordic Welfare State Revisited
10.45-12.15 Sessions 1
Session 1a: Social Democracy, the Nordic Welfare State and Future Challenges
• Panel discussion: Matti Hannikainen (University of Helsinki), Jenny Jansson (Uppsala University), Klaus Petersen (University of Southern Denmark), Kjell Östberg (Södertörn University)
Session 1b (BIO): Biographical Narratives and Social Histories: Exploring Lives and Networks
• Malin Arvidsson (Lund University): Nelly Thüring: Theosophist, Feminist, Socialist
• Tapio Bergholm (University of Eastern Finland, University of Helsinki): Serendipity and Networks. Making Biography of First Social Democratic President of Finland
• Fanny-Johanna Reinikka: Two Case Studies Depicting the Working Lives of a Porter and a Male Servant Living in Helsinki between 1880–1930
• Chair: Nina Trige Andersen (Selskabet for Arbejderhistorie)
Session 1c: War and Labour
• Mikko Rapo (Tampere University): Redefining Suffering: The Rural Poor’s Quest for Land and Recognition in Post-War Finland
• Dino Šakanović (University of Sarajevo): Labor and Workers in Extreme Conditions of War – The Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Olli Siitonen (University of Helsinki): Moral Injury in History, Analyzing Perpetrator Accounts of Wartime Violence
• Chair: Fia Cottrell-Sundevall (Stockholm University)
Session 1d (FEM): House and Work
• Gulfam Tasnim (Open University UK): The Impact of Childcare Provision on Women Garment Workers’ Engagement with Capitalism: An Ethnographic Study of Textile Reuse and International Development’s Childcare Initiative in Bangladesh
• Riikka Suominen (Tampere University): Sexual and Reproductive Health Care, Institutional Change, and Related Experiences in Finland (1910s-1950s)
• Valgerður Pálmadóttir (University of Iceland): Discourses about Housework in Public Debate in 20th-Century Iceland
• Commentator: Silke Neunsinger (ARAB)
12.15-13.30 Lunch
13.30–15.00 Session 2
Session 2a (CDW): Dynamics of Labour Control
• Pontus Blüme (Stockholm University): Digital Labour Platforms and the Concept of Control
• Lukas Rosenberg (University of Göttingen): Scientific Management and the Control of Labour-Time. The Great Indian Peninsula Railway Workshops at Parel in the 1920s
• Rehna Sotto (University of Jyväskylä): Control and Discipline in Shift Work Online Group
• Chair: TBA
Session 2b (BOR): Labour Movements and Social Dynamics Across Borders
• Michał Gęsiarz (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań): Norwegian Solidarity with “Solidarity” — at the Crossroads of Trade Unionism and New Social Movements?
• Marta Laskowska (University of Helsinki, University of Warsaw): Who’s behind the Border of the Border States? The Social Democratic Party of Finland, the Polish Socialist Party and the images of Russia 1919-1921 from a Comparative Perspective
• Daniel Stridh (Stockholm University): Ambivalent Solidarity? Exploring the Nexus between Migration and Racism in the Swedish Municipal Workers’ Union 1972-2002
• Constantin Torve (Queen’s University Belfast): Re-writing the ‘Ethnic Fabric’: Ethnic stereotyping of Irish and Nordic Workers in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century American Press
• CHAIR: TBA
Session 2c: Capital and Political Access (Mid-1800s and Onwards)
• Fia Cottrell-Sundevall (Stockholm University): Suffrage, Capital, and Welfare: Conditional Citizenship in Historical Perspective
• Ragnheiður Kristjánsdóttir (University of Iceland): Capital and Political Candidacy
• Josefin Hägglund (Malmö University): Election Meetings and Political Participation in 1880s Sweden
• Chair: TBA
Session 2d (DLH): Data for Labour History: Current Potential and Limitations
• Risto Turunen (Tampere University)
• Jonas Söderqvist (Swedish Labour Movements Archives and Library)
• Tanja Juuri (Tampere University)
• Chair: Silke Neunsinger (ARAB)
15.00–15.30 Coffee
15.30-16.30 Keynote 2
• Pirjo Markkola (Tampere University): Nordic gender equality revisited
18.00 City reception / Werstas
THURSDAY 8 MAY
9.15-10.15 Keynote 3
• Katrina Navickas (University of Hertfordshire): Popular Resistance to the Enclosure of Urban Public Space in the Long 19th Century: Protest and the Commons in England
10.30-12.00 Sessions 3
Session 3a: Nordic Labour Geographies Between (and Beyond) East and West
• Arvand Mirsafian (Uppsala University): Comintern, the Swedish Communist Party, and the Critique of ‘Capitalist Rationalisation’
• Eirik Wig Sundvall & Byron Rom-Jensen (University of Oslo): The Lumber Business: The Nordic Dimension of AFL-FTUC’s Strategies and Operations, 1944–1957
• David Witver (Penn State University): Searching for Jimmy Hoffa in Finland
• CHAIR: TBA
Session 3b: Labour History, Colonialism, and Indigenous People in Sweden and Canada
• Inger Jonsson (Uppsala University, ARAB), Silke Neunsinger (ARAB)
• Åsa Össbo (Umeå University)
• Nathalie Kermoal (University of Alberta)
• CHAIR: TBA
Session 3c (CRI): Labour Strategies and Industrial Relations
• Jenny Jansson (Uppsala University): Blockades instead of Strikes? How Swedish Unions Have Used Blockades in Labor Conflicts 1980–2020
• Ilkka Kärrylä (University of Helsinki): Why is the Nordic Model of Industrial Relations Breaking Down in Finland? An Historical Perspective
• Hannah Karina Yoken (University of Jyväskylä): Finnish Labour Unions and Anti-Nuclear Mobilisation during the Euromissile Crisis
• CHAIR: TBA
Session 3d (CDW): Labour and Protest: Economic, Political, and Social Dimensions
• Ulla Aatsinki (Tampere University): Forest Workers – Economic Necessity, Political Threat in Lapland in the First Decades of the 20th century
• Mart Kuldkepp (University College London): Policing Foreign Radicals in Neutral Scandinavia: The Case of Augustin Souchy
• Christos Stefanopoulos (University of Crete): The Hunger Strike as an Alternative Form of Workers’ Protest in Post-Civil War Greece, 1950-1967
• Chair: TBA
12.00-13.30 Lunch
13.30-15.00 Sessions 4
Session 4a (FEM): (Trans)National Labour: Gendered Work and (Dis)Connections with Changing Environment
• Simo Laakkonen (University of Turku): ‘A Touch of Frost: Gender, Class, Technology, and the Urban Environment in an Industrialising Helsinki’
• Lotta Leiwo (University of Helsinki): ‘Transnational Networks and Colonial Ideas: Finnish Migrant-Settler Women in the U.S. Socialist Movement’
• Petri Talvitie (University of Turku): ‘Industrialisation and Women’s Labour Force Participation in Rural Finland’
• Chair: TBA
Session 4b (BIO): Labour Biographies: Documenting and Connecting Individual and Collective Personal Trajectories within Labour Organising
• Nina Trige Andersen, Copenhagen) and Jonas Söderqvist (Swedish Labour Movements Archives and Library) will present the project ideas. The panel will include Ole Martin Rønning (Arbejderbevegelsens arkiv och bibliotek, Oslo), Alpo Väkevä (Työväenliikkeen kirjasto, Helsinki), Ragnheiður Kristjánsdóttir (Háskóli Íslands, Reykjavik) and a representative (Jesper Jørgensen ???) from Arbejdermuseet og Arbejderbevægelsens Bibliotek og Arkiv, Copenhagen
Session 4c (CDW): State Surveillance and Labour Conflicts
• Hanne Koivisto (University of Turku): Finnish Left-Intellectuals as the Target for State Police in the 1930s
• Carl-Erik Strandberg (Åbo Akademi University): Språk och arbetskonflikt – En fallstudie i strejken på Wasa Tekniska Fabrik 1928
• Tiina Lintunen & Piia Vuorinen (University of Turku): State Controlled Communists and Forgotten Åland Islands
• Chair: TBA
Session 4d: Nordic Labour Movements: Religion, Nonalignment, and Organizational Strategies
• Nils Ivar Agøy (University of South-Eastern Norway): The Norwegian Labour Movement and the Problem of Religion in Post-War Norway
• Jouko Raitaniemi (European University Institute): Nordic Nonaligned Social Democracy and the North-South-East-West Division of the International Labour Movement
• Isak Törnqvist (Umeå University): The Labour Commune: Early Swedish Social Democracy’s Organizational Path and Political Opportunities
• Kjell Östberg (Södertörn University): Where did socialism go?
• Chair: TBA
15.00-15.30 Coffee
15.30-17.15 Session 5: Film screening
• The Potato Revolution. Telling the Story of the Women who Inspired the Swedish Hunger Uprisings of 1917 + discussion between the director Anna Hammerin, Professor Katrina Navickas and Karen Brookfield.
18.00 Evening programme
FRIDAY 9 MAY
9.15–10.15 Keynote 4
Christian De Vito (University of Vienna): Labour Coercion and Punitive Configurations: Perspectives from the Spanish empire (16-20th centuries)
10.30–12.00 Sessions 5
Session 5a (BOR): Labour history Beyond Animal-Human Divides
• Marja Jalava (Tampere University): Pigs as Metabolic Labourers: The Case of Pig Fattening Performance Testing in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
• Mary Hilson (Aarhus University): Labouring Pigs: Animal and Human Workers in Denmark c.1860–1930
• Petteri Norring (University of Helsinki): Division of Labour in Multispecies Society. Modernization of Finnish Pig Farming in the Early Twentieth Century
• Chair: TBA
Session 5b (FEM): Women and Trade Union Organizing
• Samantha Smith (Michigan State University): “We do, indeed, have a union”: Showgirls and the Struggle for Unionization with the AGVA in Las Vegas, 1970-1980
• Thea Holmlund (Stockholm University): Navigating precarity and social reproduction: The approach of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) to part-time and temporary work 1993-2007
• Commentator: Nina Trige Andersen (Selskabet for Arbejderhistorie)
Session 5c (CDW): Social Policies and Labor Practices
• Minna Harjula (University of Tampere): Work and Minimum Income Aid in Finland, 1850-2020: Interconnections and Contradictions
• Hanna Kuusi (University of Helsinki): Workplace Physical Exercise in Finland, 1960–1970s – Leisure, Break or Duty?
• Pirjo Ovaskainen (University of Helsinki): How Finnish Alcohol Law Controlled Working Class in the 1930’s?
• Chair: TBA
Session 5d (LIT): Working-Class Fiction
• Jussi Lahtinen (Tampere University): Narrating the Social Class – Working-Class Literature of the Long 1970s as a Form of Social Class Discourse
• Asta Sutinen (University of Helsinki): Romantic Hopes and Expectations – Huviposti and the Promise of a Better Future in Romantic Fiction of Labour Magazines
• Jordi Valentini: Collective Autobiography and Working-Class Literature in Mediaterranean Europe
• Chair: TBA
12.00–13.30 Lunch
13.30–15.00 Sessions 6
Session 6a (CDW): Embodied Labour and Workplace Discipline: Corporeality and Control in 20th-Century European Industrial Settings
• Kirsti Salmi-Niklander (University of Helsinki): Discipline and (Dis)obedience in Workplace Security: Accidents and the Scars of Work in Finnish Metal Industry
• Grace Simpson (Complutense University of Madrid & Jagiellonian University in Kraków): The Mineworker’s Body as Subjected and Subjective: Symbolic Violence in the Asturian Coal Basins of Late Francoist Spain
• Marcin Stasiak (Jagiellonian University in Kraków): Invalid’s Three Bodies: Corporeality, Labour and Disability in Invalids’ Cooperatives in Socialist Poland
• Commentator: Marta Kurkowska-Budzan (Jagiellonian University in Kraków)
• Chair: TBA
Session 6b (CRI): Economic Crises and Labour Responses
• Ken Bjerregaard (Linköping University): The Private Sector Employees in the Crisis of the 1930s
• Maika Absetz (University of Helsinki): Unemployment in the Thought and Rhetoric of the Central Trade Organisation of Finland, 1968–1986
• Carlotta Maria Vaglieri (Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca): Oral History of Deindustrialization in Milan
• Chair: TBA
Session 6c (DLH): Digital Labour History
• Antti Hannunen (Museum Centre Vapriikki): The Tampere 1918 Civil War Museum – a Digital Museum Project
• Lars-Erik Hansen (TAM-Arkiv): Preserving and Making Digitized Images Available: an Example from White-Collar Unions
• Mikael Wallin (Tampere University): Deconstructing Working-Class Culture: Normative Attachments Imposed on Working Class Cultural Activities
• Chair: Risto Turunen
Session 6d (LIT): Newspapers and the Working-Class Culture
• Konsta Kajander (University of Jyväskylä): Rethinking Working-Class. Cognitive-Cultural Aspects of the Finnish Working-Class Press 1885-1910
• Heikki Kokko (Tampere University): Nationwide Circulation of Knowledge: Emergence of Civil Society Revisited in Finland
• Santeri Vuori (University of Turku): “Art for the working class!” – Discourse and Ideology in Finnish Language Worker’s Party Newspapers’ Art Related Articles 1905–1918
• Chair: TBA
Session 6e (FEM): Women and Industry
• Katri Karkinen (Lammasoja Research Service): Emerging Civil Society and Dairy Industry in 1900 in Finland
• Jakub Muchowski: Bodies and Selves of Women Workers in Mining Industry in Late XX Century. The case of Coal Preparation Plant in Walbrzych, Poland
• Diane Kirkby: ‘Young Australian Sailor Girls’ Finding Work on Scandinavian Ships
• Commentator: TBA
15.00–15.30 Coffee
15.30–17.00 Sessions 7
Session 7a (CDW): Short-term Labour and Precarious Work in Northern Europe during the Pre-Industrial Era
• Tiina Miettinen (Tampere University): Conflicts between Men Servants and Masters in Ekenäs Town in 1623–1696
• Sofia Gustafsson (Helsinki University): Enlisted Soldiers’ Atypical Employment in Helsinki in the 1750s
• Ella Viitaniemi (Tampere University): A Man without Bread: Precarious Clergy and Struggling Career-Paths
• Chair: TBA
Session 7b (CRI): Labor Movements and Economic Challenges: Mobility, Production, and Activism
• Jarmo Peltola & Leena Enbom (University of Helsinki): Resilience and Vulnerability: Exploring Working-Class Mobility During and After the 1930s Crisis
• Li Eriksdotter Andersson (Stockholm University): Work or Wheat? Frictions of Production and Consumption in the Swedish Trade Union Movement, 1914-1945
• Jesper Jørgensen (Arbejdermuseet) & Flemming Mikkelsen: Activist Leadership and the Danish Brewery Strike 1985
• Chair: TBA
Session 7c: Labor Dynamics and Workforce Education
• Thanasis Betas (General State Archives, Magnesia Prefecture – Greece): Marital Status, Living Conditions and Survival Strategies of Male and Female Workers in the Greek Tobacco Industry, 1950–1970
• Shannon Ikebe (John Abbott College): Collective Workers’ Funds and the Rise of Neoliberalism in Sweden and Québec
• Laura Kola (Tampere University): Educating European Workforce in British Secondary Schools
• Chair: TBA
Session 7d (FEM): The Private and the Public
• Silja Pitkänen (University of Jyväskylä): An Ideal Woman of the Early Soviet Union
• Arja Turunen (University of Jyväskylä) & Anna Niiranen (University of Jyväskylä): A Space for A New Woman: Labour Feminism in the Finnish Women’s Magazine Uusi Nainen in the 1960s and 1970s
• Pete Pesonen (Finnish Labour Archives): Oral history of Finnish factory “homers” from a gender perspective
• Commentator: TBA
Session 7e: Film screening + discussion with the director (15.30–17.15)
• Helle Stenum: The Sad Truth
18.00 Dinner
Thematic tracks
BIO Idols, Oddballs and Human Beings – Biography in Nordic Labour History
BOR Borders and Border Crossings in Labour History
CDW Controlled and Disciplined Workers
CRI Labour Market in Times of Crisis
DLH Digital Labour History
FEM Feminist Labour History
LIT Working-Class Literary Culture in Nordic Countries and Beyond