NARS

The Centre of Excellence studies nationalism from the perspectives of historical scholarship and cultural memory studies. Our research task is to explore how people's experiences, emotions, and memories interact with national systems of meaning-making and how nations are constructed in human action. We use and develop approaches of everyday and personal nationalism, minority nationalism, memory studies, national indifference, and critical archival studies. The four research teams of the CoE are: 1. Metanationalism and the Processes of Nationalization (Finnish Literature Society), 2. Everyday Affordances of Nationalism (Tampere University), 3. Nationalism beyond Borders (University of Helsinki), and 4. Minority Nationalisms (Åbo Akademi University). The aim of the CoE is to explain how nationalism works in practice, how it influences the lives of different groups of people, and to expand our understanding of nationalism's various manifestations and functions.

2026

2028