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AbstractThousands of Roma were killed in Ukraine by the Nazis and auxiliary police on the spot. There are more than 50,000 Roma in today’s Ukraine, represented by second and third generation decendants of the genocide survivors. The discussion on Roma identity cannot be isolated from the memory of the genocide, which makes the struggle over the past a reflexive landmark that mobilizes the Roma movement. About twenty Roma genocide memorials have been erected in Ukraine during last decade, and in 2016 the national memorial of the Roma genocide was opened in Babi Yar. However, scholars do not have a clear picture of memory narratives and memory practices of the Roma genocide in Ukraine. A comprehensive analysis of the contemporary situation is not possible without an examination of the history and memory of the Roma genocide before 1991.

Recently rediscovered photographs of the remains of thirteen individuals buried in the Sado Valley Mesolithic shell middens of Poças de S. Bento and Arapouco, excavated in 1960 and 1962, show the potential of revisiting excavation archives with new methods. The analysis, which applies the principles of archaeothanatology and is enriched by experimental taphonomic research, confirmed details concerning the treatment of the dead body and provided new insights into the use of burial spaces. Some bodies may have been mummified prior to burial, a phenomenon possibly linked to their curation and transport, highlighting the significance of both the body and the burial place in Mesolithic south-western Portugal.

Iron ore mining in the Norrbotten region of Sweden began in the early years of the twentieth century as a commercially uncertain and even dangerous proposition. But even before it began to generate profits, public debate began over the appropriate role of the state and of private capital (including foreign investors). This included whether iron ore should be exported for profit or retained for future processing in Sweden—even though the technology and infrastructure for such domestic industry did not exist. Tracing the evolution of this debate in the Swedish news media through to the First World War, this paper argues that the revenue generated by exports became more attractive than the promise of future domestic industry because that revenue could underwrite pressing political objectives. Although domestic iron ore processing remained linked to visions of future industrial prosperity, uncertain visions of future prosperity lost appeal as the capacity for export revenues to generate prosperity in the present became more potent.

School in the shadow: Private education in Stockholm 1735. During the early eighteenth century, private education was a more significant sector of the educational market than was public education, regarding the number of students and teachers, the presence of female students and teachers, the social background of the students, and the introduction of a more diverse and modern curriculum. Hitherto, little has been known of the actual scope or general conditions of private education, which has been over-shadowed by studies of public education. The article maps private education through the Stockholm Church Consistory’s (Stockholms stads konsistorium) thorough inventory of private teachers in the capital of Sweden during 1734–36, providing information of both suppliers and consumers within the private sector of the educational market, as well as of the practice and functions of private education in early modern time.

Educational content recommendation is a cornerstone of AI-enhanced learning. In particular, to facilitate navigating the diverse learning resources available on learning platforms, methods are needed for automatically linking learning materials, e.g., in order to recommend textbook content based on exercises. Such methods are typically based on semantic textual similarity (STS) and the use of embeddings for text representation. However, it remains unclear what types of embeddings should be used for this task. In this study, we carry out an extensive empirical evaluation of embeddings derived from three different types of models: (i) static embeddings trained using a concept-based knowledge graph, (ii) contextual embeddings from a pre-trained language model, and (iii) contextual embeddings from a large language model (LLM). In addition to evaluating the models individually, various ensembles are explored based on different strategies for combining two models in an early vs. late fusion fashion. The evaluation is carried out using digital textbooks in Swedish for three different subjects and two types of exercises. The results show that using contextual embeddings from an LLM leads to superior performance compared to the other models, and that there is no significant improvement when combining these with static embeddings trained using a knowledge graph. When using embeddings derived from a smaller language model, however, it helps to combine them with knowledge graph embeddings. The performance of the best-performing model is high for both types of exercises, resulting in a mean Recall@3 of 0.96 and 0.95 and a mean MRR of 0.87 and 0.86 for quizzes and study questions, respectively, demonstrating the feasibility of using STS based on text embeddings for educational content recommendation. The ability to link digital learning materials in an unsupervised manner—relying only on readily available pre-trained models—facilitates the development of AI-enhanced learning.

The focus of doctoral research is of great significance for the development of an academic discipline and the potential for innovation. A significant number of PhD graduates however expect to be employed as university teachers, and the correlation between competence needs as suggested by the undergraduate curriculum and PhD research appears to be weak. Based on library catalogue data and digital archives, this study investigates interrelations between the initial research orientation of individual scholars and the development of English as a university subject in Sweden. Dissertation topics 1950-1999 indicate a gradual shift from a dominance of linguistics in the earlier decades to a dominance of literary studies towards the end of the period. Dissertations in the field of English-language literature between 2000 and 2019 demonstrate a growing interest in literatures outside England and the United States, a predominance of studies of prose and a move towards contextual modes of criticism centred on social or political theories. Studies of modern or contemporary literature dominate greatly whereas there are few dissertations on older literature. Undergraduate course plans and literature lists for 2020 from the major research universities show a strong connection between first-term literature courses and current research, as indicated by the topics of PhD dissertations from the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The teaching of older literature is not supported by new research to the same extent, however, which means that it may become increasingly difficult to ensure the close links between research and study programmes stipulated in the Swedish Higher Education Act (1992:1434).

Post-war housing stocks have been in focus for modernisation and transformation since the 1980s. Technical deficiencies and social problems related to exclusion and segregation have been arguments for investments. The architecture has been seen as part of the problem and alterations to its character have been important in finding solutions. Lately, policy for energy efficient renovation and decarbonisation of the housing sector has put the modern housing stock in focus again. With reference to the lack of common appreciation and understanding of the historical and cultural value of the post-war housing, this paper discusses current policy and its implementation. The paper begins by looking at Gothenburg, the second largest city in Sweden. The development of a Modern Historical Environment program is presented with its application in three examples of housing. These cases exemplify the opportunities and consequences of modernisation and energy renovation on modern heritage. The designation of modern built heritage differs from the designation of older constructions due to its scale and volume. Designating an object refers, on the one hand, to recognising an example of a specific building type and construction methods and, on the other, to its socio-historical context. Thus, both tangible and intangible values are acknowledged. Modern heritage is characterised by its resilience to alterations and allows layers of change to be included, informing about historical events. Le parc de logements d’après-guerre a fait l’objet de modernisation et de transformations depuis les années 1980. Les insuffisances techniques et les problèmes sociaux liés à l’exclusion et l’isolement ont été des arguments en faveur des investissements. On a estimé que l’architecture faisait partie du problème ; les transformations de sa physionomie ont donc été importantes pour trouver des solutions. Récemment, la politique de rénovation énergétique et de décarbonation du secteur du logement a placé à nouveau le parc de logements modernes au centre de l’attention. Cet article traite de la politique actuelle et de sa mise en œuvre en évoquant le manque de reconnaissance et de compréhension des valeurs historiques et culturelles des logements d’après-guerre. L’article prend comme point de départ Göteborg, la deuxième plus grande ville de Suède. L’élaboration du programme « Environnement historique moderne » y est présentée ainsi que son application dans trois exemples de logements. Ces cas illustrent les possibilités et les conséquences de la modernisation et de la rénovation énergétique du patrimoine contemporain. La qualification du patrimoine bâti contemporain diffère de celle du parc immobilier ancien de par son échelle et son volume. La désignation d’un objet se réfère, d’une part, à la reconnaissance d’un exemple de type de construction spécifique et de méthodes de construction et, d’autre part, à son contexte sociohistorique. Ainsi les valeurs matérielles et immatérielles sont-elles reconnues. Le patrimoine contemporain se caractérise par sa résilience face aux transformations et permet aux différentes strates de changement d’être incluses, informant sur sa profondeur historique.