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Moving Pictures – Movements in Pictures. Protest Photography in Germany and Sweden, 1880-1918

Photos of protests evoke different associations. Whether they are blurry photos on social media or Pulitzer Prize-winning photo documentation, they share the commonality of transcending spatial boundaries and their potential to become history themselves. This project investigates how photographs related to protest movements for labor rights, women’s suffrage, and conservation between 1880 and 1918 in Germany and Sweden generated narratives and counter-narratives of the protesters, complementing or undermining written reports.

- Olga Syrova, 22.11.2025

Latvian Folk Ornament and Mythology Nexus as a Revival: Contested Historical Layers, Visualized Ideologies, and Commodified Creativity

Contemporary uses of folk ornament reach beyond the realm of traditional culture and it is a cultural phenomenon where belief, national and ethnic sentiments, esoteric outlook, commercialization and layers of historical meanings and contestations are intertwined in a mutually constitutive way. Through an ethnographic lens theoretically grounded in folklore studies, this dissertation explores the nexus of folk ornament and mythology in Latvia and its manifestations in different ideological constellations of the 20th century as well as contemporary settings.

- Olga Syrova, 22.11.2025

Heterogenity of Historical Time in the Contemporary Latvian Novel: A Comparative Perspective

Since the fall of communism, the experience of time in society and culture has changed significantly. Instead of linear and homogeneous time, we live in a fragmented, layered, and plural temporality. This is also evident in contemporary novels, which depict the present as incorporating the past. The doctoral thesis focuses on the contemporary Latvian novel as a paradigmatic case of multitemporality and compares it to other works of Eastern European literature.

- Olga Syrova, 22.11.2025

Bodies, Violence, Gender Roles: Shifting Expectations of Clerical Behaviour in Medieval Scandinavia

My doctoral project focuses on the expectations of clerical behaviour, largely dictated by canon law and ecclesiastical discourse of the time. While certain desirable behaviours and lifestyles for members of the clergy were known and promoted by the Scandinavian church from its beginnings, there are numerous accounts of clerical misconduct, regular breaches of canon law and even long-term disregard for certain conventions. The reaction of the papacy and papal legates to these incidents varied from time to time, and at times there was even tolerance of clerical behaviour that was explicitly contrary to canon law.

- Olga Syrova, 22.11.2025

Sich das Land erschreiben: Die DDR als Erinnerungsraum in der deutschen Literatur der 1990er Jahre und des beginnenden 21. Jahrhunderts

I am studying novels by female authors born in the GDR in the 1970es (e.g., Antje Rávic Strubel) and explore how space and the traces of GDR are used in their novels.

- Olga Syrova, 22.11.2025

Ruth Maiers place – In the Context of Collective Memory and Life Writing

The 2007 publication of Ruth Maier’s Diary. A Jewish refugee in Norway marked a turning point in the reception of her writings. Previously on the margins of Norwegian memory culture, her life story became recognized as a vital testimony to the Holocaust and has since taken a central place in narratives of Norway’s occupation years.

- Olga Syrova, 22.11.2025

Nature in Service of the Nation

How does literature shape national conceptions of nature? How are different nature types valued as regard to nation building – be it as an economic, or symbolic, asset? My PhD project arises from this question, and will combine literature geography, cultural memory studies, and digital humanities to examine how nature is constructed in the literature of Norway from 1814 to 1871.

- Olga Syrova, 22.11.2025

The Coastal Town as a Topos in the Norwegian Novel of the Late 19th Century

A significant proportion of the authors we associate with the Modern Breakthrough in Norway (Bjørnson, Ibsen, Kielland, Lie, Skram, Garborg), seem to make use of the coast town, and other communities along the Norwegian coast, as literary settings. Few literary scholars have commented on why this particular spatial object gains influence. This leads me to ask: Who took part and helped shape the literary-geographical imaginary of the coast-town? Was it shaped also by non-canonized, ‘forgotten’ authors? Is there a special connection between ideology and form on the one hand, and the figure of the coast-town on the other?

- Olga Syrova, 22.11.2025

European Memory Conflicts Reflected in the Baltic Sea Region on the Example of “August 23rd”

"August 23rd", commemorating the historic date of the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, an agreement between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, is both known as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes as well as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and National Socialism. My project determines the debates surrounding “August 23rd” as an example for memory conflicts and for competitions over the (historical) authority of interpreting Europe’s violent history of the 20th century.

- Olga Syrova, 21.11.2025