ArkDes’ new guest researchers
In 2024 ArkDes will be opening our new collections exhibition where we finally get to display original material from the museum’s collection. As a part of the work with the new exhibition, ArkDes has given financial support for guest researchers to delve into the over four million objects that can be found in the collection.
Our ambition is to create opportunities to study, question and find new ways of viewing the cultural heritage that can be found in the museums archive.
The new guest researchers will participate in the development of research-related perspectives and the selection of objects for the exhibition.
Elisa Maria López is an environmental anthropologist, postdoctoral researcher, and lecturer at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture. Her research at ArkDes will combine methods in anthropology and architectural history to examine the social, cultural, and material role of architecture (focusing on worker housing, parks, and gardens) in shaping everyday life in Swedish company and industrial towns in the late 19th and 20th Centuries.
Marisa Cortright holds degrees in urban and architectural history. Her research will aim to trace the social reproduction involved in architectural production, asking whose labour—and in what forms—appears in the ArkDes Collections. She will focus on professionalised women studying and working in architecture, as well as those operating in the non-professionalised architectural sphere who maintain the spaces of the everyday.
Jenni Hakovirta is a Saami architect and PhD researcher. At ArkDes, Hakovirta will investigate the presence of Saami architecture and design in the museum’s Collections. Her primary research interests lie in architectural competition materials, processes within creative architectural practices, and power relationships in architecture. Her work seeks to open a meaningful dialogue around Saami architecture and design so it can meaningfully stand alongside its Nordic and Swedish counterparts.