Keynote lecturers

Nordic Challenge Conference
Grete Brochmann

Grete Brochmann is professor of Sociology at the University of Oslo. She is a leading scholar on migration and immigration policy. She has published widely on the subject often with a Nordic thematic approach. She was the leader of the Brochmann-committee 2009-2011, whose task was to evaluate the effects of increased immigration on the Norwegian welfare state. Brochmann has been a visting sholar at Université Catholique de Louvain in Brussels (1992-1993) and at UC Berkeley (1999-2000). She is the author of the contemporary history section, 1975-2000, in the work covering Norwegian immigration history from 900 to 2000 (Norsk innvandrings historie 900-2000).

Bo Stråth

Bo Stråth was 2007–2014 Finnish Academy Distinguished Professor in Nordic, European and World History and Director of Research at the Department of World Cultures / Centre of Nordic Studies (CENS), University of Helsinki. 1997–2007 he was Professor of Contemporary History at the European University Institute in Florence, and 1990–1996 Professor in History at the University of Gothenburg. He is a principal investigator in the HERA Research Project, The Debt: Historicizing Europe's Relations with the 'South'. Bo Stråth’s research has focused on philosophy of history and political, social and economic theory of modernity, from a conceptual history perspective with special attention to questions of what keeps societies together or divides them, and how community is constructed. A special field of interest in this perspective is the history of European integration and the exploration of Europe in its global historical (19th–20th century) context through the method of conceptual history.