The Swedish newspaper Arvika Nyheter (2016-07-04) has published a portrait of Märta-Lisa Magnusson, senior lecturer of Caucasus Studies at Malmö University, describing how her interest in Russia started and evolved, and how it later gradually shifted to also include the Caucasus. 
Currently she is one of the lecturers of the online courses in Caucasus Studies, offered at the Section for Caucasus Studies in Malmö. Photo: A selection of Märta-Lisa Magnusson’s many publications on Russia and the Caucasus (https://mah.academia.edu/MartaLisaMagnusson)
During the collapse of the Soviet Union she took an interest in the country’s minority groups.
– The Soviet Union was a multinational state. Russians were the largest group, of course, but 20 percent were not Russians. How did these peoples think and react to the ongoing processes at that time?
In that way Märta-Lisa found herself engaged in the Caucasus and became interested in Chechya, among other things. In the end of the 80s and beginning of the 90s together she undertook fieldwork and organized study visits for researchers and journalists to the regions that were dominated by non-Russian population.
Read the whole article (in Swedish): http://nwt.se/arvika/2016/07/04/med-fokus-pa-ryssland?refresh=true
Photo by Anton Eriksson