Life-story of a Professorship

In 2021, the bo Akademi University was celebrating a hundred-year-old university chair of the Nordic Ethnology, or the Kiseleff Professorship, after the donator Feodor Kiseleff, a wholesaler.This centennial publication is not an ordinary history of a university chair, but a life-story, writes Professor Fredrik Nilsson (435).It is to draw a picture of the birth, metamorphoses, and permanent traditions of the university subject.Like life-stories in general, it creates history, although, the picture of the past is selective and inaccurate.Instead, the features of continuity and constant forward movement in space and time emerge.The starting points for discussions are the available facts, memories and experiences of students, doctoral students, researchers, archive personnel and professors, as the editors, Fredrik Nilsson, and Professor Emerita Anna-Maria strm write (8).The book is divided into three sections, consisting of twenty-one articles including the preface and after-words.At the end of the book, fifteen authors are presented.The first section, 'Development and everyday life of the university subject,' covers the history of the university chair including the professors in successive order, establishing the archives and archival practises, the emergence of research specializations and transformations in education.Moreover, the connections to the general development of ethnology in Finland, to related institutions and associations, and to the colleagues in European and Nordic countries, explicit in Sweden, are discussed.Fredrik Nilsson, and Anna-Maria strm, or both together, have drafted most articles in the chapter.Moreover, Professor Nils Stor discusses how ethnology in Finland developed along five paths; Ph.L.