Bo Stråth (born 1943) is a professor emeritus. He was the 2007-2014 Academy of Finland Distinguished Professor in Nordic, European and World History and Director of Research at the University of Helsinki. From 1997-2007 he was Professor of contemporary history at the European University Institute, Florence and from 1991-1996 Professor of History at Göteborgs Universitet. Member of The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Visiting fellow/professor at Universität Kiel and Glasgow University (Alexander von Humboldt Fellow), the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the Collegium for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (SCASSS) in Uppsala and at Aarhus universitet, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Universität Bielefeld, Saitama Daigaku, Tokyo Daigaku (Todai, Japan Foundation Fellow), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Universität in Frankfurt am Main, Lunds universitet, Stockholms universitet (SCORE), Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Studies (STIAS) and University of Barcelona. He has been a member of the International Committee for Social History and a member of several selection committees, advisory boards, evaluation panels, and editorial boards.
Details as to curriculum and research
The seminar, centred on the debate of the time on the impact of the single currency in several fields of social policies, aimed to bring together experts from various fields. Professors Silvana Sciarra and Bo Stråth provided the theoretical framework in introductory seminars. They highlighted the historical background of the adoption of the single currency and the legal innovations linked to it.
The point of departure of this seminar organised by Kar Klare, Silvana Sciarra and Bo Stråth was the major shift in the view on work which has occurred since the 1970s. The language of flexibility, deregulation and globalisation tried to cope with this change but hardly did so exhaustively, as little as the continued invocation of full employment did.
Two workshops in 1999 explored the Transatlantic relationships, similarities, and differences between the USA and Europe in terms of culture, politics, consumption patterns, and production styles.
Bo Stråth’s EUI seminar 1997-2001 drew on and fed back to the research work within the project The Cultural Construction of Communities in the Process of Modernisation in Comparison. During these years, the project prepared several edited volumes. The work on the volumes provided input for the seminars and vice versa. The most important seminars are listed here.
A point of departure for the CONDIS project, Bo Stråth's first major project, was the bias in modernisation theories dominant among comparative social scientists not long ago that economic growth is the ultimate cause of welfare state development, where all states were thought to be caught up in a universal and evolutionist logic of industrialisation. Such theories pay insufficient attention to the political structures and cultural/ideological processes through which highly varied responses to industrialisation come about. During the research process, a critical view of its own historical, sociological point of departure was developed, questioning perspectives of path dependency and intrinsic driving forces in historical processes.
Collaborators in the EReRe-project (Helsinki University) 2009-2013 Adrian BriskuKelly GrotkeThomas HopkinsLiliana ObregónFrancisco OrtegaMarkus Prutsch Other Collaborators European University Institute:Anna TriandafyllidouVeronika Tacke Helsinki University:Norbert...
