Jakob Kihlberg

My research focuses on political culture, media history and visual culture during the nineteenth century.

My dissertation, Gränslösa anspråk (2018), investigated how the international as a phenomenon took shape in the middle of the nineteenth century trough international congresses.

At present, I work on the project Making a European People Visible: The Birth of Illustrated News and Transnational Political Subjectivity in the 1840´s (founded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation)

My research focuses on political culture, media history and visual culture during the nineteenth century.

My dissertation, Gränslösa anspråk: Offentliga möten och skapandet av det internationella [Boundless claims: Public meetings and the making of the international] (2018), investigated how the international as a phenomenon took shape in the middle of the nineteenth century. The book is based on three case studies of early international congresses and focuses on how they were mediated for audiences in different countries.

Present project:

Making a European People Visible
The Birth of Illustrated News and Transnational Political Subjectivity in the 1840’s

How “people” come to identify as part of “the people”, in the sense of those that have a legitimate say in political matters in society, is in many ways a central question of our time. It is also a question with historical roots that go back to the constitution of modern democratic societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this research project the people as a political subject is investigated through an analysis of how illustrated news magazines, that were established in several European countries during the 1840’s, contributed to new ways of imagining this collective.

The present study will investigate both how illustrated news magazines pictured public gatherings of people as expressions of a popular will, and how readers were in different ways positioned as part of a collective with legitimate interests in the business of government. The general hypothesis to be investigated is that the establishment of a market for visual news during this period, for the first time made it possible for influential groups to (literally) see themselves as participating in the life of a transnational European people. More generally, the study will provide historical perspective on present debates both about the politics of representation and the influence of different media on popular government.

Project duration
2020–2023

Funding
The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond)