Izabela Dahl

About Izabela Dahl

Izabela Dahl is an associate professor and senior lecturer in history whose main research interests concern modern and contemporary European history. Her projects are linked to the fields of migration and refuge studies, humanitarian aid and relief activities, the history of anti-Semitism, Jewish history, European memory culture, and international relations in the Baltic Sea area, with special attention given to democratization processes.

Her analysis is driven by the interest in social power structures and social categorisations that pre-condition cultural and social contexts. Epistemologically her work is inspired by discourse analysis, intersectionality, narrativity and the use of oral sources in history writing, as well as source pluralism. Approaches that are often applied in her investigated empirical studies include sensitivity to the gender dimension, processes of social inclusion and exclusion, and social categorization.

Her recent publications focus on democracy issues. Her recent contribution Epistemiskt våld - vad är det? (Epistemic violence – what is this?, 2024) is on epistemic violence as a form of structural violence concerning academic knowledge production.

In another publication, she discussed the importance of cultural heritage for various institutional and state actors, and its link to the well-being of democracy in the country: A History (Re)Interpretation in the Name of Truth: Memory Culture and Cultural Policy in Poland after 1989. This contribution is a part of the anthology "Democracy - Paradoxes, Changes and New Perspectives Across the Globe" (2024). 

Further recent publications are outcomes of the project, My Historical Backpack, such as the co-authored piece with Henric Bagerius and Jimmy Engren published in "The History Teacher" 2/56, and the contribution on the international blog for history education, which reflects research on history teaching at universities and secondary schools, My Historical Backpack – An Exercise in Teacher Education, 2023/03/21. These texts discuss the opportunities and challenges of using students' narratives of the past as a vehicle for learning history and stress the necessity of rethinking history about the demands of inclusive education.

Research projects

Dahl is currently working on several research projects:

Women and their humanitarian efforts for refugee reception in Sweden from a historical perspective is a project that deals with social-historical issues and the historicization of the concept of humanitarian aid, where the philanthropic tradition meets the current development of aid policy. Within the project, exemplary empirical knowledge is created around questions about, how and to what extent gender equality and a rights-based perspective have played a role in humanitatian aid historically. The project was funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. 

In political history, Dahl's interests concern the Cold War and diplomatic relations within the Baltic Sea region. Her focus is on diplomatic contacts between Poland and Sweden from 1956 to 1974. In addition to the empirical study of Swedish-Polish bilateral relations during the 1960s and 1970s, she studies Swedish foreign policy's role for revitalization of the European dialogue between East and West. The objective is to deepen source-based knowledge about Swedish and Polish involvement in peace policy solutions in Europe and to map the early Swedish aid to the Polish democracy movement.

Teaching

In terms of teaching, Dahl mainly teaches chronological history courses and essay courses within the teacher education program at Örebro. She also conducts topic courses, such as Migration and Globalization and Perspectives on the Holocaust.

She is invovled in doctocal education and has taught doctoral courses addressing different theoretical and methodological aspects of historical studies at Gothenburg University, Örebro University and Bielefeld University in Germany.

Previously, Dahl was active at Humboldt University in Berlin (HU), the University of Technology and Economics in Berlin (HTW Berlin), the University of Gothenburg (GU), and Karlstad University (KAU).

Member of the network The Jews in Sweden at the Hugo Valentin Center since 2007 and  member of the Research Network for Holocaust Studies since 2020.

Member of the editorial board of the journal  Nordeuropaforum (ISSN: 1863-639X) since 2005.

She has been collaborating with the European Commission on various research administrative assignments since 2014 and since 2018 she has been part of the Migration Research HUB, IMISCOE funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program within the framework of the grant agreement Ares (2017) 5627812-77012.

External censor for candidate exams at Department of Archeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen since 2018.

Co-coordinator of the network Politics, Citizenship & Nations at the European Social Science History Conference (ESSHC) since 2018.

Member of the International Advisory Board of the Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt Foundation, Germany since 2019.