Activities in NSU revolve around thematic study circles that meet twice-yearly over a three-year cycle. NSU study circles explore widely diverse topics within the arts and humanities, natural and social sciences. See the list of previous circles>>
By creating a space for regular collaboration over an extended period of time, durable networks in the Nordic-Baltic region and beyond grow out of the study circles. The circles provide a cross-disciplinary forum for debating topics that are not already established in universities, thereby contributing to the initiation of new research agendas and alternative perspectives. An important dynamic of the study circles is to follow a process of research that allows for works-in-progress and experimentation. Study circle outcomes take various forms, which document and reflect the circle’s projects and activities. Additionally, each circle has the opportunity to publish an anthology with the NSU Press presenting their research.
Anyone can make a proposal for a study circle cycle and each study circle is facilitated by two coordinators. Subjects of study are based on peer-reviewed proposals that then must be accepted by the General Assembly of the NSU.
Details on how to make a proposal can be found here.
During the winter, in their respective locations throughout the Nordic and Baltic region, each circle holds a three-day symposium. During one week in the summer all of the circles hold their symposia at a shared location, which offers additional possibilities for cross-fertilisation, to share and be in dialogue with participants research. NSU study circles offer a rare environment for critique and exchange consisting of returning members and a constant influx of new participants. This dynamic enables circle members to follow a consistent working process over time, while also benefiting from interaction with and input from new participants.
NSU offers ECTS credits to students who participate in a symposium.
If you wish to join a winter or summer symposium you can read more about each specific circles.
- Circle 1: Urban Studies: Between Creativity and Power
- Circle 2: Cybioses: Shaping Human-Technology Futures
- Circle 3: Hospitality and Solidarity: Feminist Philosophy in Thought, History and Action
- Circle 4: Narrative and Violence
- Circle 5: Racialization, Whiteness and Politics of Othering in Contemporary Europe
- Circle 6: Nordic Environmental Ethics
- Circle 7: Artistic Research | Performing Heterotopia
- Circle 8: Futures of Education, Cultural Diversity, Imaginations and Collective Transformations in Time of the Anthropocene
- Circle 9: Comics and Society: Research, Art, and Cultural Politics
- Children’s Circle
- Previous Study Circles (Archive)
- Appearances of the Political – Study Circle 2016-2018
- Appropriating Science and Technology for Societal Change
- Call for Paper at Nordic Summer University for Circle 6 – 2017 summer session
- Call for Paper: Winter Symposium, 3-5th of March, 2017.
- Circle Project Plan ‘Appropriating Science and Technology for Societal Change’
- Preliminary Program, Circle 6, fifth symposium, 3-5th March 2017, Fengersfors
- Program Circle 6 summer 2017 ‘Appropriating Science and Technology for Societal Change’
- Comparative Futurologies – Study Circle 2015-2017
- Crisis and Crisis Scenarios: Normativity, Possibilities and Dilemma – Study Circle 2014-2016
- Critique in the Age of Populism – Study Circle 2018-2020
- Crossing Contexts: interventions through artistic research – Study Circle 2013-2015
- Exploring Affect – Study Circle 2013-2015
- Feminist Philosophy: Time, History and the Transformation of Thought – Study Circle 2017-2019
- Heterologies of the Everyday – Study Circle 2013-2015
- Learning and Bildung in Times of Globalisation – Study Circle 2018-2020
- Narrative and Memory: Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics – Study Circle 2018-2019
- Summer Symposium Narrative and Memory 2019
- CFP WS 2019: Uses and Abuses of Storytelling: Theorizing the Intersections of Narrative, Memory and Identity
- CFP 2019: Victims, Perpetrators and Implicated Subjects: Rethinking Agency at the Intersections of Narrative and Memory
- CFP WS 2018: FICTION AND FACT IN NARRATIVES OF POLITICAL CONFLICT
- WS 2019: USES AND ABUSES OF STORYTELLING: THEORIZING THE INTERSECTIONS OF NARRATIVE, MEMORY AND IDENTITY
- CFP 2018: Reimagining and Remembering the Other: Narrative Empathy and its Limitations
- CFP 2017 TRAUMA NARRATIVES AND THE ETHICS OF READING
- Summer Symposium 2018
- Program 2018 Winter Symposium
- CFP: Transcultural Memorial Forms: Contemporary Remembrance of War, Displacement and Political Rupture
- Summer Symposium 2017
- Patterns of Dysfunction in Contemporary Democracies; Impact on Human Rights and Governance
- Practicing Communities: Transformative societal strategies of artistic research – Study Circle 2016-2018
- Circle 7 Activities 2016–2018:
- Confirmed speakers and listeners for the Circle 7 summer symposium 2017
- Circle 7 Winter Symposium 2017 Saxnäs
- Abstracts – Circle 7 Summer Symposium, Orivesi 2016
- Invitation to satellite Circle 7 seminar
- CALL FOR POTENTIALS 2016<
- Speakers’ Abstracts for the Riga winter symposium 2016
- Confirmed speakers and listeners for the Winter symposium in Riga 2016
- Riga 2016 Schedule – Practicing Communities: Transformative societal strategies of artistic research
- Obituary Karin Sjöberg
- Circle 7 Activities 2016–2018:
- Psychoanalysis in Our Time – Study Circle 2014-2016
- Transformations in welfare in the Nordic countries – Study Circle 2014-2016
- Understanding Migration in Nordic and Baltic Countries – Study Circle 2017-2019
- CALL FOR PROPOSALS WS 2019: “Diaspora, Environment, Generation”
- Program SYMPOSIUM WINTER 2019
- Program Summer 2018 | Understanding Migration in Nordic and Baltic Countries
- Program Winter Symposium 2018
- Summer Session 2018
- Program Summer Session 2017
- Winter 2018 symposium: “Representing Migration”
- Program SYMPOSIUM WINTER 2017
- Ad Hoc Feminist Philosophy 2016
- Ad hoc. Learning and Bildung in the time of globalization 2017
- Ad hoc. Psychoanalysis and the Symptom 2017
- Ad hoc. What is critique? 2017
- Ad hoc. Writing Movement 2017
- Human rights and International Relations – Study Circle 2015-2017