UK-Nordic Mobility: Tracing Flows and Building Networks

Encouraging collaboration between academics, museum and heritage studies, and migrant communities to explore how mobility has affected the identities of the UK and the Nordic region.

Rooted in the belief (supported by recent trends in Migration Studies) that all types of migration should be examined, including those between what today might be regarded as ‘privileged’ regions, the project aimed to focus on the migrant communities (particularly as represented by local multicultural heritage groups and institutions), the movement of objects, texts, ideas and images and the multilingual environment triggered by these flows. By studying these movements both from a historical and contemporary perspective, he project sought to contribute to the understanding of migration, integration and heritage, ultimately favouring the creation of plural societies at a time when mobility is challenged. 

Through an online two-day conference, the project encouraged collaboration and discussion between the academy, heritage communities and non-academic audiences (both the migrant communities at the centre of the project and the wider societies of which they are part). The conference brought together researchers from several disciplines (such as Area Studies, Linguistics, Sociology and Visual Culture) in order to explore how mobility has affected the identities of the UK and the Nordic region from the nineteenth century onwards.

Ultimately this was with the aim of setting up the UK-Nordic Mobility Network, a consortium of universities and organisations in the UK and Nordic countries mapping the movements of people, ideas and texts between the UK and the Nordic countries and reflecting on the construction and preservation of individual, national and multinational identities in these regions. In addition, the project also launched an online exhibition Nordic Fragments, featuring objects from UCL Collections which tell stories of UK-Nordic Mobility.