Center for Caucasus Studies at Øresund University – 10 years

We have an environment of competence on the Caucasus region on both sides of the Øresund strait between Denmark and Sweden that dates back for several decades. There are probably few regions where so many researchers were interested in the Caucasus at such an early date, long before the collapse of the Soviet Union – Ib Faurby, Helen Krag, Lars Funch Hansen, Märta-Lisa Magnusson, Vibeke Sperling, Søren Theisen, Karina Vamling, to mention some.

They conducted field research in the Caucasus already in the 1980s and 1990s, closely following the development in  the region: the struggle for independence and democracy, through wars and ethnopolitical conflicts. In November 2005 the “Center for Caucasus Studies at Øresund University” was founded as a platform and research network (http://www.caucasusstudies.org/center/activities/founding-meeting-in-2005.html). On the basis of this collaboration the first Caucasus Studies courses were developed at Malmö University (https://youtu.be/-khXAXXP1jI).

Photos from the anniversary workshop and seminar on November 26, 2015.

IMG_1947IMG_1958IMG_1949

International Kartvelological Congress

The International Kartvelological Congress was held in Tbilisi on November 10-14, 2015. It was organized by the Georgian Acacemy of Sciences, Tbilisi State University and the Georgian Patriarchate.

Prof Karina Vamling, Caucasus Studies (Malmö University) participated with the paper “These wine wells are just as good as the old Goths’ vats of mead” – historic-ethnographical materials on Georgia in early Swedish newspapers.

 

Special issue of “Sport in Society” on developments in Sochi and Russia after 2014

spinsoc (1)The journal Sport in Society. Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics has recently published the special issue When the party is over: developments in Sochi and Russia after the Olympics 2014, edited by Bo Petersson (Malmö University), Karina Vamling (Malmö University) and Alexandra Yatsyk (Kazan Federal University).

Contributions include:

  • Andrey Makarychev and Alexandra Yatsyk: From Sochi – 2014 to FIFA – 2018: A Fading Sovereignty?
  • Bo Petersson and Karina Vamling: Fifteen Minutes of Fame Long Gone: Circassian Activism before and after the Sochi Olympics
  • Jonathan Grix and Nina Kramareva: The Sochi Winter Olympics and Russia’s Unique Soft Power Strategy
  • Johan Ekberg and Michael Strange: What Happened to the Protests? – The Surprising Lack of Visible Dissent During the Sochi Winter Olympics
  • Ray Taras: Putin’s Sochi Hubris: Righting the Ship of Sport, Wronging the Ship of State?