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Review: Axel Hörstedt. Latin Dissertations and Disputations in the Early Modern Swedish Gymnasium: A Study of a Latin School Tradition c. 1620–c. 1820. Göteborgs universitet (PhD diss.), 2018, 502 pp.

Denna uppsats är en studie av Blåsmarks bönhusförenings nedläggning och överlåtelsen avbönhuset till Blåsmarks DUF år 1947. Studien är begränsad till tidsperioden 1945–1948 föratt undersöka föreningarna innan och efter den händelse som är i fokus i uppsatsen och ärbaserad på de mötesprotokoll bägge föreningar förde under tidsperioden 1945-1948. Iuppsatsen undersöks föreningarnas arbete innan bönhusföreningens nedläggning 1947 samtorsakerna bakom dess nedläggning och vilka följder det fick för Blåsmarks DUF. Skeendetundersöks ur ett processperspektiv och följer den analytiskt-rationella modellen. Studiensresultat visade att bönhusföreningens nedläggning och överlåtelse av bönhus till BlåsmarksDUF var ett beslut taget främst på grund av att båda föreningarna bestod av samma medlemmar och arbetet med bönhuset redan till stor del utfördes av Blåsmarks DUF. Vidarevisade även studien att arbetet för Blåsmarks DUF föreföll sig detsamma efter övertagandetav bönhuset men att det utökades till att omfatta frågor gällande skötseln av bönhuset. Detframkom även i studien hur Blåsmarks DUF glädjes av att få ett eget bönhus och att beslutetfrån båda föreningar varit enhälligt och utan opposition.  This thesis offers a study of the closure of the Blåsmarks bönhusförenings and the transfer ofthe prayer house to Blåsmarks DUF in 1947. The study is limited to the period 1945-1948 toexamine the associations before and after the events in question and is based on the protocolswritten during both associations’ meetings between 1945-1948. The essay examines theassociations’ work before Blåsmarks bönhusförenings closure in 1947, the reasons behind itsclosure and what consequences it had for Blåsmarks DUF. The event is examined from a process perspective and follows the analytical-rational model. The results of the study showedthat Blåsmarks bönhusförenings closure and the transfer of the prayer house was a decisionmade mainly because both associations consisted of the same members and the work with theprayer house was already largely carried out by Blåsmarks DUF. Furthermore, the study alsoshowed that the work for Blåsmarks DUF is pleased to have its own prayer house and that thedecision to transfer it to them was unanimous and without opposition. 

Historically, cheating in universities has been limited to smuggling notes into exams, unauthorized cooperation, plagiarism and using ghost writers. New improvements in natural language processing now allow students to easily generate text, that is both unique and, in many ways, indistinguishable from what a human would create. These texts can then be submitted with little to no risk of getting caught by anti-cheating software. There are currently a multitude of such text generators online, which vary in ease of use, cost and capabilities. They are capable enough to generate unique text which will evade plagiarism-tools employed by universities. If you combine relatively cheap pricing, ease of use, pressure to perform well in school and low risk of detection. It is not too difficult to imagine that students will use tools like these to cheat. This thesis mainly focuses on whether humans can differentiate AI-generated essays from human written ones and what countermeasures can be used to hinder its use. By giving teachers at Halmstad University human and AI-generated text; then asking them to guess the source of text presented. The experiment concluded that teachers' ability to differentiate AI-generated text from human written text could not be proven. This thesis also surveys the currently available detection methods for AI-generated text and determines that they are not sufficient in their current form. Lastly, this thesis showcases alternative examination methods that could be used instead of essay-style examinations.

By examining the donations by the local nobility to the local church, this thesis aims to study the church as a public room. By analyzing the donations of the nobility in relation to Habermas concept of the public sphere and the concept of conspicuous consumption the donations to the churches can be viewed as manifestations of power. This thesis studies all donations to the churches that leaves material and visual remnants in the church room. The results shows that there was a conscious strategy for the nobility to use the church for manifestation and representation of power. The nobility used their donations to manifest their power and to represent the power towards the people. This was done by filling the church with their names and coats of arms. By donating liturgical objects, church silver, chapels and coats of arms used for funerals the nobility was able to symbolically place themselves in the religious rituals. The church as a room was a symbolically and hierarchical place, and by connecting themselves with this room by donations the nobility could manifest their position in society, both locally and nationally. 

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.

The large-scale transatlantic mobility of students, teachers, and researchers is a twentieth-century phenomenon that has contributed to the reshaping of international cultural, economic, and political relations into the twenty-first century. Through and as part of this development, the United States transformed into a powerful and influential country on the global stage. As a large, populous, and industrialized nation, the United States has been significant both as a funder of international mobility and as a destination for foreign students and scholars. Sweden, a small, peripheral country in Northern Europe, has had a long relationship with the United States. Amidst the mass migration of peoples from several European countries to North America in the mid-nineteenth century to the 1920s, over one million Swedes migrated to the United States. The connections made through this migration, combined with the growing economic, industrial, and cultural resources of the United States, led to a renewed desire to maintain and improve relations between the two countries from the early twentieth century. This study investigates the development of scholarship programs in Sweden and the United States and their role in the academic exchange between these two countries from 1912–1980. Set against broader cultural, economic, and political processes that increased the scale and complexity of academic mobility in the twentieth century, this study explains how scholarships facilitated and structured flows of people and knowledge. The relationships between three parts of scholarship programs are analyzed: their purposes, organizational frameworks and praxis, and scholarship awards. The analysis employs three points of departure: rationales for internationalization, historical institutionalism, and symbolic capital. Annual reports and scholarship holder documentation are the two main types of sources. Annual reports were used to create a historical timeline of the purposes that drove the founding of organizations and the establishment of scholarship programs to understand the institution of scholarship-funded academic mobility in the twentieth century. Scholarship holder documentation was used to create two datasets of scholarship awards from 1912–1944 and 1945–1979, which were analyzed using descriptive statistics to find patterns and trends in scholarship awards. The results show that the scholarship programs in this study structured complex and asymmetrical flows of people and knowledge between Sweden and the United States in the twentieth century. In the first period, private foundations were the main providers of scholarships and were steered by an array of cultural, academic, and economic purposes. After World War II, and especially during the Cold War, scholarship programs were submitted to the politicization and regulation of the United States government as transatlantic academic mobility became an increasingly widespread practice. The combined and overlapping purposes that steered scholarship-awarding from 1912–1980 facilitated the rise of particular individuals, types of knowledge, higher education institutions, and industries in Sweden and the United States. In addition, the asymmetrical distribution of these scholarships, in which three times as many Swedes traveled to the United States than the reverse, gradually structured a dependence on the academic, economic, and technological resources of the United States.

Under 2023 uppmärksammar Sveriges Riksdag 500 år av riksdagshistoria, samt att det är 40 år sedan riksdagen flyttade tillbaka till husen på Helgeandsholmen efter tolv år i Kulturhuset vid Sergels Torg. Därför släpper riksdagen nu boken Riksdagen i tid och rum – historien, husen och arbetsplatsen. I denna rikt illustrerade volym görs spännande nedslag i riksdagens historia. Människorna, husen – och den samtida politiken skildras på ett lättillgängligt sätt. Läsaren tas med till olika nutida riksdagsmiljöer och får inblick i det maskineri som får dagens riksdag att fungera. Dessutom skildras riksdagsjournalisternas vardag och beslutet om att bygga om husen på Helgeandsholmen – trots att ett förslag om nybygge segrade i en arkitekttävling 1970. Därtill presenteras rika smakprov på den varierade konst som ryms såväl inne i riksdagens hus som på dess väggar.

This essay aims to understand and analyse earlier research concerning women’s roles in the Late Iron Age through a gender perspective. This will be done by analysing the Volva theory in relation to ancient medicine in Scandinavia with the primary focus on the medicinal herb henbane. The volva theory and the interpretation of grave 4 at the fortification of Fyrkat as a “Volva grave” had an immense impact on contemporary scientific research and popular science. The essay will examine the volva grave, at Fyrkat in Jylland, Denmark because it’s unique finding of henbane seeds. For comparison the essay will look at other archeological contexts containing henbane. The Oseberg grave will also be included in this essay because of its relevance for the volva interpretation and gender discourse in earlier research.

A life without freedom, what is that? This question was stated in a letter from a man institutionalized at one of Sweden’s mental asylums in the 1940s. It is also the title of this essay which explores the life and experiences of institutionalized individuals during 1941–1949. This analysis is based on letters they wrote to the Swedish author Astrid Väring who published her first book regarding the psychiatric care system I som här inträden (1944). Her book was a novel, which yielded great public interest and a year later was adapted for the screen. This led to people starting to write letters to Väring telling her about their stories from inside of the mental healthcare system. These letters constitute the basis for the results of this essay which aims to provide new knowledge on people’s experiences of institutionalization as expressed by their own words. The analysis is a part of the disability history field and a contribution to the critical study of the Swedish Folkhem. Based on both quantitative and qualitative methods, the letters and their contents tell us about those writing these letters and their experiences during, before and after confinement. The results from quantitative analysis of in total 404 letters out of which 207 are subject to in-depth study show that the majority of them were written by men and by people having experienced the mental health care system. Relatives to them, healthcare professionals and individuals without any connection to this system are also found among those writing letters to Väring. From these letters we learn of the abuse inmates endured during their institutionalization both physically and psychologically. Their lives before confinement and the reasons behind it are also focused on. Social friction with people in their surroundings, criminal offenses, and voluntary care exemplify some explanations to their confinement. The stories they share about their life upon release are defined by a sense of fear, persecution, and a loss of property, social networks and sense of security, in addition to a fear of being confined yet again or meeting those who once caused their incarceration. In all, the letters can be seen as a protest against the entire health care system they were faced with, which further reflects the helplessness and frustration they felt regarding their life and situation.