SCAS News - 17 February, 2023

The 5th Wittrock Lecture, Panel Discussion and SCAS Alumni Event Attracted People from
Near and Far

Yesterday, 16 February, 2023, the Collegium welcomed Professor Fredrik Logevall as the fifth
invited speaker of the SCAS Wittrock Lecture Series. In front of a large audience - both in the
Thunberg Hall and online – Logevall, who is Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs
at Harvard University and a former SCAS Fellow, talked on the topic Writing a Political Life: On
the Challenging Relationship Between Biography and History.

In the panel discussion following the lecture, Logevall was joined by historian, writer and journalist
Henrik Berggren and Professor of Literature Anna Williams (Uppsala University), discussing the
promise and peril of biography.

While the lecture and panel discussion were public events, the second part of the day was dedicated
to the annual Alumni Event, seeing current and former SCAS Fellows gather together with board
members and other affiliated guests for a reception and dinner, including musical entertainment
with a truly Swedish touch.

On the whole, it was a very inspiring day, and it was a great pleasure to see people from near and
far – and from many different cohorts of SCAS Fellows - attending the events.

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The Wittrock Lecture Series was instigated by the Swedish Collegium in 2019, in honour of the
contributions of Professor Björn Wittrock, one of the founding directors of the Collegium in 1985
and its former Principal (1996-2018).

The Collegium aims to arrange the Wittrock Lecture annually. The inaugural lecture was held in
2019, by Professor Jürgen Kocka on Historians and the Future. It was followed in 2020 by the
second lecture, held by Professor Helga Nowotny on Life in the Digital Time Machine. Due to the
Covid-19 pandemic, the third lecture was postponed and both the third and fourth lectures were thus
held in 2022, by Professors Hans Joas (Moral Change and the Ambiguity of Religions: Christianity
Between Racism and the Struggle Against It) and Linda Colley (Constitutions in Times of Crisis)
respectively. Usually the lecture is combined with a panel discussion and an Alumni event.

The 5th Wittrock Lecture will be available in print and to watch online in due course.

Read more about the 5th Wittrock Lectures and Panel Discussion here >>
Watch the previous Wittrock Lectures here >>
Download the previous Wittrock Lectures here >>