Nordic Girlhood Studies – Identity, resistance, agency and girls place within social change

Girls and young women have historically played a significant role in social movements such as the suffrage movement, temperance movement, and labor movement.

Today, we see again how girls and young women are taking their place in the public sphere and defending or seeking to change social conditions at both national and global levels.

A well-known example from the Swedish context is Greta’s school strike for the climate, which, at the time of writing, is in its 237th week.

In addition to this example, we see other examples around the world where girls/young women resist or try to defend or change social conditions.As this is an important but relatively unexplored area in our Nordic contemporary society, the purpose is to organize a conference to provide an opportunity for girlhood researchers in humanities and social sciences to present and discuss ongoing research on the topic of girls’ place in social movements.

Together, we hope to create a broad picture of the research being conducted in the Nordic region, exchange experiences and knowledge, and enable contacts and new collaborations.The conference is organized by the research network FlickForsk!

Nordic Network for Girlhood Studies in collaboration with the Finnish Girlhood Studies Network Tyttötutkimusverkosto and is held at Umeå University.

The conference consists of four sessions where doctoral students and researchers are given the opportunity to present their ongoing work in the first three sessions, and where the fourth and final session is intended to discuss the future of Nordic girl research. Preliminary themes are presented in the conference program.

The conference will be conducted as a hybrid conference and we plan for approximately 25 participants on-site and an equivalent number digitally.