We sat down with Olof to talk about his thesis-writing process and asked him if he had any tips for future thesis writers.
Hello Olof. What are you up to right now?
I am currently living in Berlin and working in the kitchen of a French restaurant, which is a wonderful experience. In February, I will start my position as a part-time research assistant for a project on the concept of the “knowledge society” from 1980 onwards.
You have been awarded CFE’s best thesis award for your master thesis. Congratulations! What has the experience of writing a thesis been like, and what have you taken away from the experience?
I truly enjoyed it! Just having days, weeks, and months of reading and then slowly starting to write something. It was tedious, of course, but the self-dependency suited me. And that is probably what I have taken with me from the experience: making plans for my work, being patient with myself and the results I find, as well as understanding the limits of my workload.
What made you interested in the topic?
It started with an idea, or even a feeling, that I did not see reflected in the existing literature on Europeanization from a Swedish perspective; namely that in the course of history there has been a conflict between the concepts of Europe and the EU. This is a simple observation, but one that I believe has been overlooked.
As I was getting more familiar with the literature on the topic by spending time in the archives, I found that actors all over Europe – writers, artists, and journalists – understood the idea of Europe as something different from, or even in conflict with, the institution of the EU. For example, the German poet Hans-Magnus Enzensberger argued that what constituted Europe as such would be lost if the EU centralized Europe in its way during the end of the 1980s.
The cultural pages functioned as a kind of melting pot for these movements, where people could meet, write, and discuss Europe's history, present, and future.
My point is that these actors should not be excluded from the history of Europeanization because, just like politicians, economists, and diplomats working in Brussels, they thought of themselves as Europeans. They created an identity around it – just in a different way! And the cultural sections of newspapers in general, not only the Swedish ones, were a crucial arena for these actors. The culture pages functioned as a kind of melting pot for these movements, where people could meet, write, and discuss Europe's history, present, and future.
In your thesis, you explain that your overall aim is to “present a different Zeitschichten (Koselleck) of Europeanization”. Was this aim present before you started your research, or did you discover it along the way?
This goes back to my answer above; Europeanization is many things. Europe was a fashionable concept in the 1980s, not only in relation to the EU. The cultural pages had a certain quality and role in this process since it was an arena, a place of discussion, meeting, and knowledge circulation. It did not necessarily have an agenda of propagating one aspect of Europe. In other words, it was not teleological in the sense of an EU directive. Therefore, I see the cultural pages as not necessarily tied to a synchronizing moment of Europeanization, several European temporalities, or concepts of Europe, could coexist when actors engaged in a discussion about Europe.
For future thesis writers out there, do you have any advice on how to find a topic?
Contact a supervisor early on. In my experience, professors are always happy when students show interest in their research topics. Make an appointment and describe what your main interests have been during your studies.
After that, speaking from a historian's point of view, go to the sources, the archive. Find the unwritten letters, the forgotten magazines, and the hidden subcultures. Working, as they say, "against the grain" and problematizing a grand narrative is always a great way of creating new knowledge.
Lastly, what are your plans for the future?
My hope is to one day pursue a PhD, but one step at a time.
Bärtås was granted the award with the following motivation: “‘European Discoveries: Cultural Europeanization of Swedish Culture Pages 1977-1989’ is a time-historical analysis of the cultural influence on Sweden from Continental Europe during the decade before the fall of the Berlin wall. The analysis is based mainly on a detailed study of the work of three cultural journalists who were working for leading Swedish newspapers. The essay deals with extensive empirical work in a theoretically conscious way. The European perspective is well developed and the essay makes a clear research contribution. Overall, the thesis demonstrates a very good understanding of the relevant literature and appeals to a general readership."