NEWS
Thomas Nygren, researcher in History and Education at HUMlab, has been granted a scholarship from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. This gives him the opportunity to spend a two-year post-doctoral period at Stanford University, United States.
What are you going to do at Stanford University?
I am a researcher in history didactics, and at Stanford I will collaborate with professor Zephyr Frank and his team at The Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA). I will conduct a comparative study of history education in Sweden and the US that revolves around complex issues of human rights and history. Using digital tools, we will analyse how the complexity of history education can be handled in schools.
“The complexity of history education”, what do you mean by that?
One of the main tasks of history education today is, in addition to teach historical facts, to train students in critical thinking. They are supposed to understand their own role in the historical process and they are also supposed to learn about the importance of human rights. This however can become a paradox; to, on the one hand, teach students to look at history with a critical eye, and on the other hand claim that some values are universally true, like the human rights. I want to investigate how teachers can educate this paradox in the best possible way. I also want to study what role the teachers’ own view of the human rights play in how the students perceive them. There are, for example, some studies that show that depending on how the teachers present the human rights, some students perceive them as something that mainly concerns developing countries and not, for example, Sweden. We need more tools to handle this challenge in history education.
What are your expectations when going to Stanford University?
I already have established collaboration with Stanford and CESTA, I have been there before and researchers from their team have been to Umeå and HUMlab. My experiences from collaborating with Stanford so far are only positive ones, I have found new creativity in my research and I have been able to see my research field from new perspectives!
When do you leave for Stanford?
If everything goes according to plans I will go to Stanford at the end of the summer in 2014 and I will stay for at least a year!
How do you feel?
I am surprised but very happy! My family will come with me to California as well, so this is a huge adventure for all of us!
