I was recently awarded a grant from the Atelier: Creative Arts and Social Sciences Network at the University of Edinburgh to assist with my doctoral research. The abstract for my project is detailed below.
This project will utilize creative and collaborative anthropological methodology to explore how Norwegian values relating to secularity, egalitarianism, and environmentalism emerge in alternative education in southern Norway. Norwegian Folkehøgskoler (‘folk high schools’), funded in part by the Norwegian government, are boarding schools where young adult students voluntarily spend a year enrolled in ungraded coursework relating to creative arts, sports, or travel. These schools, designed in the 1840s by theologian N.F.S. Grundtvig, offer an alternative pedagogical model for ‘life-long learning’ that was created in order to transmit cultural and social values to working-class Scandinavians (Stråth 2018). While folk high schools were originally founded on Lutheran values, Norwegian folk high schools today are categorized as either ‘Christian’ or ‘secular’, a classification that demonstrates how Norwegians view the distinction between Christian and secular identities in a broader social context. Currently, many folk high schools are implementing new tools for environmentally-conscious practices as young Norwegians are becoming increasingly concerned with adopting behaviours that mitigate the effects of the climate crisis. For this project, I will work with secular folk high school students to co-create a multi-modal ethnographic piece that will incorporate sound, film, and mixed media projects that will culminate in an exhibit at the end of the school year open to the public. By assessing how social and material forms emerge through co-creation at folk high schools, I will investigate how Norwegian values are received, negotiated, and reconstructed by students as they imagine their futures during a time of social, political, and ecological change.