The Impact of Shoah on European Jewish Business Networks and Cultural Mobility

Retracing the transnational movements of two Swedish-Jewish business families, and their subsequent migration of cultural ideas between diasporas and across national borders, the postdoctoral project examines the function, disappearance and change of Jewish transnational economic-cultural networks in Europe, influencing Swedish-Jewish life from the 1910s to the 1990s. It studies the period before, during, and after the Holocaust, and thus explores the impact of Europe's antisemitism - annihilating six million Jews and European Jewish centers in the 1930s and 1940s - on Jewish belonging to Europe. With an interdisciplinary approach - using business history, cultural studies, comparative studies, and gender studies - the project shows how firstly, European Jews used transnational structures to collaborate on cultural developments, and secondly, discriminating jurisdiction against and genocide of an ethnic minority in one European nation informs the ethnic group's cultural practices in other parts of Europe.

​

The project started in January 2021 and is connected to my postdoctoral position at Centre for European Research (CERGU) and Department of Historical Studies at University of Gothenburg. It is run in association with Centre for Business History in Stockholm, where I hold a research fellowship. 

​

Two conferences have been set up in relation to this project. The international and online workshop Jews, Europe, and the Business of Culture, co-organised by Dr Benito Peix Geldart at Centre for Business History in Stockholm, took place on November 23-24, 2021. The results will be published as a special issue in the international journal Jewish Culture and History in 2023. The international conference A Jewish Europe? Virtual and Real-Life Spaces in the 21st Century, co-organised by Professor Joachim Schlör at University of Southampton, is set to take place on May 3-5, 2022 in Gothenburg.