This article addresses the matter of “urban spillover” in rural population development, i.e. how urban localities tend to push a ring of diffuse urban growth outwards as they expand in area. The data

Forthcoming in Social Influence. Published online: DOI: 10.1080/15534510.2018.1540358. Abstract There is widespread segregation between workplaces along ethnic lines. We expand upon previous research on

Elizabeth Finneron-Burns

I am a post doc working with Krister Bykvist and Gustaf Arrhenius on the Valuing Future Lives project. I submitted my DPhil thesis at Oxford University in September 2015. Before studying at Oxford I wo

The Monist, Volume 107, Issue 2, April 2024, Pages 176–189 Abstract The possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) exists despite no observed evidence, and the risks and benefits of actively sea

Anna Näslund

I am professor of Art History at Stockholm University and researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies. My research focuses on visual culture, picture theory and digitization.  The project Selling Pic traces the genealogy of contemporary AI-generated image hype over 200 years of promoting technologies for the production, reproduction, and circulation of pictures on a mass scale. It aims to understand the historical role of pictures not merely as commodities but as agents of commerce. The project focuses on emerging picture techniques in the 1820s, 1920s, and 2020s, examining iconographic and discursive patterns in pictures of mass reproduction (metapictures) and comparing vernacular picture theories—expressed in advertising copy and trade journalism—with canonical picture theories. Rooted in historical material practices, the project seeks to clarify and expand our understanding of how and why pictures play a central role in the work of selling in modern and contemporary societies.

Venue: Institutet för framtidsstudier, Holländargatan 13, 4th floor, Stockholm, or online. Research seminar with Katherine Puddifoot, Associate Professor in Philosophy at Durham University. Her recent mnemonic form epistemic injustice

Who cares (about)? How welfare capitalists, churches and migrants change the care of children and elders in Sweden, Germany and Italy

In Sweden, Germany and Italy welfarecapitalists, churches and migrants have been given the responsibility for health and social care. How did this happen and why?

Selling pictures. Pictorial Economy and Commoditization 1820–2020

This project will place the current discussions concerning AI-generated images in a historical context, comparing it to two previous technological breakthroughs that have affected the use of pictures for commercial purposes. 

The usual way of thinking about climate change is that the present generation will have to make large sacrifices in order to reduce emissions. For example, by consuming less goods and services. This is one reason why cutting emissions is so hard. But what if there is a way to get climate change under control where no one needs to sacrifice?

Erik Olin Wright: Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Madison-Wisconsin. ABSTRACT The idea that there is a pathway from a capitalist economy to a cooperative market economy is grounded in