Yggdrasil scholar to the Routes project
The Routes team is glad to announce that the historian Marie-Theres Fojuth, PhD student at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and affiliated researcher to the Routes project, has received an “Yggdrasil”-grant from The Research Council of Norway for a research stay in Oslo. Fojuth will stay at the University of Oslo, Department of Cultural Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS), from August 2010 until May 2011. Fojuth is working on the dissertation “Nation, Region and Landscape in Norwegian Debates on the Railway 1840-1908”, investigating the role of the infrastructure development in the Norwegian nation building process. The project analyzes nation building as the attempt to modify the perception of Norway and Norwegian regions and landscapes – the central thesis is about how the development of the infrastructure should “change” the national territory, and in so doing to consolidate and strengthen the nation. The research focuses on analyzing debates on central railway projects in the Norwegian society between 1840 and 1908, which includes debates in the parliament, the administration, the media and among engineers, the municipal administration and local railway committees.
