The Swedish Research Council grants funding 8.5 million to two research projects at SKH

The two projects are Minority fears in monstrous forms: De-Orientalism as a Monster Film by Mamdooh Afdile, Affiliated Researcher and Assistant Professor of Film and Media, and the project Learning through Dancing by Eleanor Bauer, PhD alumni and Assistant Professor of Contemporary Dance and Choreography. Eleanor was granted an international postdoc. 

“We’re so happy to have had another two VR projects accepted this year as part of the Swedish Research Council’s call for project funding applications in artistic research,” says Ann Kroon, Director of the Research Office at SKH. “It’s proof that SKH’s increased focus on support for VR applications is paying off.”

In total, VR granted a total of 53 million Swedish kronor this year in project grants and International postdoc grants within artistic research. After Konstfack and University of Borås, SKH is the HEI that received the third-largest amount of funding in 2024.

Abstracts 

Mamdooh Afdile research project Minority fears in monstrous forms: De-Orientalism as a Monster Film is about monsters in films and folk stories that are understood to represent society's implicit fear and are increasingly employed by post-colonial artists to symbolize oppression. In recent decades, the surge in Muslim immigrants in Europe and Sweden has fuelled xenophobia and Orientalism, rendering them vulnerable and with little to no representation in post-colonial artistic discourse. To address this gap, Palestinian filmmaker Mamdooh Afdile, taking an insider perspective, proposes a collaboration with myth-historian Bo Erikson, and music composer Kent Olofsson. Building on the proposition that the Swedish folk monsters once symbolized conservative fears in Sweden, Afdile with his collaborators seeks to resurrect these monsters in an experimental film, offering it a new context in the Muslim minority’s narrative. Over a three-year period, this research will explore the Muslim immigrant perspective, leading to a De-Orientalizing artwork as a Monster film, in response to the xenophobia in Sweden.

Key questions include:

1) How can studying the historical roles of a folk monster contribute to re-envisioning it in a contemporary de-Orientalizing artwork? To what extent can insights from folk stories inform cinematic decision-making?

2) Given the explicit sexual scenes in Swedish folk stories, in which way can abstract visuals and musical composition be a substitute in a cinematic adaptation to accommodate a conservative (Muslim) audience as well?

Project period: 25-01-01 och 27-12-31.

Eleanor Bauers research project Learning through Dancing aims to develop dance practices for use in primary to tertiary school classrooms. While dancing is a form of physical education or extracurricular activity in schools, the utility of dance as a
learning aid and process remains underexplored. Continuing my PhD research on dancing as a way of thinking, Learning through Dancing extends my insights on dance as a way of making sense with the senses to teaching methods for studies other than dance. With research on arts in education at Harvard University, public action at Bennington College, plus facilitation workshops at Movement in Practice and The Movement Arc and fieldwork at National Dance Institute bringing dance to public schools, I will combine various knowledges and techniques to innovate learning and teaching strategies for equity and inclusion. The aim is to develop ways of integrating and activating students’ bodies, minds, and selves in embodied, enactive, and holistic learning processes. This research applies the sensorimotor, emotional, creative, and social skills advanced by dancing to improve progressive education models such as Universal Design for Learning, Student-Centered Learning, and Critical Pedagogy. By sensitizing people to themselves, each other, and their environments in agential and empowering ways, dancing can help students become more active within and responsible for their learning, and help teachers reach students who may lose interest in more sedentary learning paradigms.

Project period: 25-01-01 och 27-12-31. 

About the Swedish Research Council

The Swedish Research Council is Sweden's largest governmental research funding agency and supports research of the highest scientific quality in all scientific fields. For the call for artistic research, 90 applications were received, of which 9 were awarded grants.