The University as a History of Knowledge

Theme: Knowledge, Epistemes, Universities

Published: 23 April 2025

Summary
In this episode of SCAS Talks, Johan Östling, a history professor at Lund University, tells us more about the history of knowledge and universities. Johan Östling discusses his research on the historical development of universities, highlighting three models: the Latin University, the German model emphasizing research, and the American model integrating large-scale research and private funding. He also touches on the Europeanization of universities, examining how European integration has influenced higher education. Johan Östling emphasizes the importance of understanding the historical layers shaping universities. Reflecting on his time as a Pro Futura Fellow, he encourages young scholars to broaden their horizons by engaging with diverse academic cultures.

Keywords
Universities, history of knowledge, Europeanization, interdisciplinarity, Pro Futura Fellowship

Suggested Link/s
Personal website: https://www.hist.lu.se/en/person/JohanOstling/ External link, opens in new window.
Kunskapens stora hus: Huvudlinjer i universitetets historia External link, opens in new window.

Transcript of the Episode

Johan Östling 00:07
Universities are very historical in their character. You can find these historical layers very clear. And to understand why the university works in the way it does you have to have some kind of historical insight, and I would say even more so than in many other institutions in society. We have other institutions that also have a long history, but I would say that universities tend to be even more strongly shaped by historical legacies than other societal institutions.

Natalie von der Lehr 00:49
Welcome to SCAS Talks, a podcast by the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. My name is Natalie von der Lehr, and in this episode, I talk to Johan Östling, Professor of History at Lund University and director of the Lund Center for the History of Knowledge, also called LUCK. About a decade ago, Johan Östling has been a Pro Futura Fellow and in residence at SCAS during the spring of 2013 and autumn 2014. His research is devoted to the History of Knowledge, with a general interest in the intellectual, political and cultural history of modern and contemporary Europe. And this is the first episode in our theme "Knowledge, epistemes, universities". Very welcome to SCAS Talks.

Johan Östling 01:32
Thank you so much.

Natalie von der Lehr 01:33
I usually say, welcome to the studio, but today, we're not in the studio. We're actually in your office in Lund.

Johan Östling 01:38
Yes, we are.

Natalie von der Lehr 01:40
Thank you very much for having me here. Would you like to say a few more words about yourself?

Johan Östling 01:44
I'm, as you mentioned, a professor of history and director of the Lund Center for the History of Knowledge, and you can say that I've been working on the history of knowledge for some 10, maybe even 15 years. Working on the history of the universities, the history of the humanities, the history of circulation of knowledge in the public sphere, often in a kind of modern and contemporary European setting, especially the post war period that has been my period from 1945 onwards.

Natalie von der Lehr 02:16
Interesting. So very briefly then, what is your research about? Just to give our listeners a little flavor.

Johan Östling 02:22
Yes, what I've been doing quite a lot is the history of universities. I've written a book, which I actually wrote when I was a Pro Futura Fellow, about the Humboldtian tradition, the European and especially the German legacy, going back to the 19th century and shaping the modern university very much. So that was a book published in 2016 and also later in an English version in 2018. So that was a main topic for many years as a post doctoral fellow. After that, I've been working quite a lot on the history of the humanities, also in a somewhat broader sense, not only the disciplines of the humanities, but also the impact of the humanities in society at large.

Natalie von der Lehr 03:06
How come you got interested in this research topic?

Johan Östling 03:09
Well, I think it started really when I was a PhD student back around 2005/2006. I was then in Berlin at the Humboldt University as a visiting researcher, writing my dissertation, which was about how Sweden, in the wake of the Second World War, reoriented itself from the German speaking world to the Anglo Saxon world. So I was writing my dissertation sitting in Berlin, and then all of a sudden I realized that issues related to the university, to "Bildung", self cultivation, that kind of questions were very prevalent and very topical in the German debate during that period. And in a way that it wasn't in Sweden at all. So when I started after that to think about what to do as a post doctoral researcher, I remembered these discussions and wanted to learn more about them, and especially how they have shaped a kind of German consciousness and a German intellectual legacy. So that is how I came into the world of the history of the university, and after that, it was expanded to become more of a broader interest in the history of knowledge.

Natalie von der Lehr 04:24
You have recently published a book, in Swedish it's called "Kunskapens Stora Hus" - could translate it with "Great House of Knowledge", and this book describes the history of universities and academic institutions. Could you give our listeners a brief summary of the content?

Johan Östling 04:40
Yes, I can, and hopefully I can also publish the book in an English version later on. I'm currently working on that. But this is a concise book, just 140 pages, and it's an attempt, from my side, to try to describe or give an overview of the history of the university. And often that is a topic that is treated in very many pages, thousands of pages, but I try to be more brief, more concise. And one important point of departure in my book is that all societies, all advanced societies, have had institutions of higher learning, of advanced knowledge. If you go back to ancient cultures in East Asia, or in South Asia or in the Middle East, you find those kind of institutions. But what we have had is the university in Europe, which is a particular form of these knowledge institutions starting in the middle ages and then developing further. And I try to give an overview by presenting three models, you might call them, of the university. First, the Latin University in the Middle Ages, where many of the distinguishing features of the university and many of the core concepts, the key elements of the university, were formulated. So we still have them as a kind of foundation of our modern universities. For example, how we divide different faculties, that is a medieval legacy, the idea of the degree system very much so, also many of the pedagogical forms, not least the lecture that is something goes back to the university. So I described this model first that emerged in the 12th and 13th centuries and lasted for many 100 years, but then in the 18th and even more so in the 19th century, it was gradually replaced by the second model, which I describe as the German model, which is the Humboldtian tradition, very much associated with a new university in Berlin, founded in 1810 where much more emphasis were on research, not only teaching, but research. So this was the emergence of the new research university, and you could call it the German model, which gradually, in the 19th century, spread to other parts of the world and became the leading model of the university. But still building on the Latin legacy from the medieval period. And then finally, I present the third model, which I call the American University model, very much belonging to the 20th century, especially from the 1930s onwards, where also teaching and research were combined, just like in the German model. But now we added more of large scale research, much more private funding, also in another kind of dynamic relation to society at large, and also perhaps a less individualistic and more teamwork spirit - people working together, not least in the natural and social sciences. So what I present is three models building on each other and constitute also today's foundation of the university.

Natalie von der Lehr 08:02
Because from every model, there is something that you can still recognize somehow in the University of today. different

Johan Östling 08:08
Different historical layers, you might call them.

Natalie von der Lehr 08:10
Exactly. But then over history, then what has changed and what is still the same, if we compare now you three models to what universities look like today?

Johan Östling 08:19
Well, remarkably, much I think, has remained the same if we look at the university as an institution in society, and the main task is still to provide advanced, scientifically or scholarly based knowledge. What has changed is perhaps one thing that came already in the 19th century, and that is the emphasis on research, not only recirculating or providing old truths, but really to discover new things. And that is something that came in the 19th century, and today it's, of course, essential for the university. Another change, a more social change, is the expansion. Up until the early 20th century, or the mid 20th century, universities were small, elite institutions, perhaps three, five, seven percent of your population attended university, almost exclusively male dominated. And after the Second World War, and especially since the 1960s we have seen the rise of the mass university. And today we have, well, it differs between different contexts and countries, but 40 - 50% of the population tend to be part of higher education system. And many, many women are within universities nowadays and in many prestigious programs, two thirds of the students are women nowadays. So that has been a quite almost revolutionary change in the long history of the university, this social expansion of the university.

Natalie von der Lehr 09:56
I'm also thinking about the natural sciences and medical studies. We have now very big groups working in international networks also and so on.

Johan Östling 10:05
That is definitely one of the major changes as well. Universities, you can argue, have been international already from the start in the medieval period, both students and teachers could travel between different universities. You can study in Heidelberg and then become a teacher in Oxford and continue to Vienna, for example, after that. But then we have seen a period for many years in the 19th and early 20th century where universities tended to be more national. But the last couple of decades, we have seen an internationalization, even a globalization, of the university. And as you mentioned, in engineering, medical and natural sciences, we have seen the emergence of large groups working in global constellations and often quite attached from a kind of local or regional context. I would say.

Natalie von der Lehr 11:01
Yes. Then, before we move on, why is it important to know more about the history of universities?

Johan Östling 11:06
Well, what we have been talking about so far, I think it makes it quite clear that universities are very historical in their character. You can find these historical layers very clear and to understand why the university works in the way it does, you have to have some kind of historical insight, to get an orientation and to an understanding of why the university looks like it does and why it works in the way it does. And I would say even more so than in many other institutions in society. We have other institutions that also have a long history, but I would say that universities tend to be even more strongly shaped by historical legacies than other societal institutions.

Natalie von der Lehr 11:57
Yes, also quite hard to make changes sometimes,.

Johan Östling 12:00
Yes, that is the other side of the coin, of course.

Natalie von der Lehr 12:03
But let's move to one of your ongoing projects then, which is about the Europeanization of universities. And first of all, what do you mean by Europeanization?

Johan Östling 12:12
Yes, that is, of course, a concept that has been debated and contested also within scholarship. But one way of describing it is that it is processes that promote or strengthen inter-european connections, entanglement, exchanges in different ways. But it's also, I think important, to underline that this concept cannot be used in a kind of teleological way, with a goal, with a political defined goal at the very end. Rather, you have to, when you're looking at processes of Europeanization, be aware of the fact that there are many obstacles, many processes of fragmentation, setbacks, and you also have to take that into account when you analyze processes of Europeanization.

Natalie von der Lehr 13:04
Can you give an example of what you're looking at in this project?

Johan Östling 13:08
Yes, this is a comparative project. I work together with four postdocs analyzing universities in different parts of Europe, and we are looking at at universities rather than countries, but they are, of course, within a kind of national context. So I have, for example, a colleague working with Spain and the University of Valladolid, one of the old ones. And they experienced in Valladolid and in Spain at large in the 1980s a kind of - this was against the background of the return of democracy and Europeanization for universities was also part of trying to be part of a democratic Europe. So that was important for the Spanish case, for example, when they embraced Europeanization in the 1980s. Other universities, for example, my own here in Lund, when people in Lund started to promote European ideas and try to be part of these processes of Europeanization, also in the late 1980s. The argument of democratization was not strong at all. Rather, the main argument was that the European platform, the European level, provided opportunities for students and researchers to get more funding, more students opportunities, for example, so it was more a kind of economic argument.

Natalie von der Lehr 14:32
You mentioned funding, and many researchers think maybe about the ERC, the European Research Council, and the grants and funding opportunities associated to that. Is that also something that you're looking at?

Johan Östling 14:44
Yes, we are mainly looking at the 1980s and 1990s when these processes of Europeanization really started. Before that we can, if we simplify talk more about national universities or individual universities, collaborating with each other. But then in the mid and late 1980s we saw a kind of emergence of new structure of a common European higher education research infrastructure. One part of this was the new framework program, or the framework program. The first one was launched in 1984 and this has developed after that. Now we are in the ninth Framework Program, the so called Horizon Europe, and we are now currently looking for the development of the 10th Framework Program. As part of this program in 2007 the European Research Council was launched. And that has been, in many ways, a success and been really also an important point of reference, not only in Europe, but also outside Europe, for researchers, ambitious researcher looking for a kind of prestigious grant that also provide funding for larger groups. So that started in 2007 and developed further in the 2010s. Very fast, you could argue for such a fairly new structure.

Natalie von der Lehr 16:09
Yeah, because funding from the ERC is really a sign of quality and excellence, right?

Johan Östling 16:14
It is. And it's interesting to see, also, from a kind of scholarly perspective, how that has been established so fast, and also, not only in the natural sciences or medicine, but increasingly so also in the humanities.

Natalie von der Lehr 16:28
Have you any grants from the ERC? Or have you applied for any?

Johan Östling 16:32
I applied. I went, this was back in 2016 I think, after my time as a Pro Futura, and I went to the second stage to the interview in Brussels. It was quite an experience, but I didn't get that But it was rewarding in many ways, both for me as a person, as a fairly young researcher, but also since I could reuse my application and apply for other funding. So that was very, very helpful in that way.

Natalie von der Lehr 17:01
Yeah, nowadays, several funders also have a program for those who went to the second stage and didn't get it. You can say you can apply for them in a sort of fast track.

Johan Östling 17:12
Exactly. That's also a very good way of handling it, since these are quite ambitious processes in terms of evaluation, and it's a waste of time and resources not to try to catch those researchers who almost made it to the very goal.

Natalie von der Lehr 17:27
I was also thinking about this kind of European exchange program, and the fun fact is that I have once been an Erasmus student myself, between Stirling University in Scotland and Uppsala University for one year in 95, and I'm still there, so not at the university, but I'm still in Uppsala. In what way are these kind of exchange programs contributing, or thought to contribute, to the Europeanization of universities?

Johan Östling 17:54
Well, I was also actually an Erasmus student when I studied in Uppsala. I went to Tübingen in in 2002 and studied there, and that was also very rewarding and and I learned quite a lot about the German academic system as well.

Natalie von der Lehr 18:07
Tübingen is a very nice place.

Johan Östling 18:09
It's a very nice place actually, that is true. But this Erasmus program, it started in 1987. It has a pre history. Everything has a pre history, but this has a pre history going back to the late 1970s when the European Commission tried to gradually implement or formulate some kind of higher education policy. And one idea was that this exchange of young people should also promote ideas of Europe and identity, but also, of course, stimulate the economy. But it started in 1987 and it's one of the most successful programs in that sense that it has really stimulated that kind of exchange for many years. And I would say that in the 1980s and 1990s those kind of programs, there were many more, not just Erasmus, but many more programs. They were really important part of the Europeanization processes of the universities. Later on, in the late 1990s and the first years of the 21st century, the focus was partly shifted towards other structures, not least the Bologna process to uniform and homogenize the higher education system. And later on, the emphasis has been perhaps more on research, research funding. We were talking about the European Research Council. Sothe emphasis has been on different aspects of higher education and research.

Natalie von der Lehr 19:40
Many of the very famous universities are Anglo Saxon, if you think about Oxford, Cambridge in the UK, or places like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, many more in the USA. In what way are European universities different?

Johan Östling 19:53
In my book, I had this three models, and the third model was the American one, and I said that it started in the 1930s, and even stronger after the Second World War. But that model actually built very much on the German model. When the new Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore was founded in 1876 - that has been called the first German university, the first research university in the United States. And it was founded by people who had been to German universities as students or as teachers, as researcher and they had been inspired by the German research university model. So you can find that model, the German model, within many of the leading American universities from the late 19th centuries onwards. But nowadays, of course, well, you can go back to the early post war period. You have seen the growth of the American model, and also that that model has been integrated in the dynamic development of American society at large. In the research literature, there is this idea that the American universities have been very strong due to the fact that they have been related both to warfare and welfare. Both to the development of the military industrial complex, and also, of course, to democracy, economy, the growth of American society at large. Things are perhaps changing now as we speak, I don't know. But that has been a true success story, in that sense, that the American universities have really contributed to and been integrated in the political, economic and also, of course, intellectual and cultural development of the United States after 1945.

Natalie von der Lehr 21:46
You mentioned, things are changing in the USA, and they certainly are, and we see where that goes. But also in Europe, we have had, we have a rise of populism at the moment, and a clear shift to the right, a movement to the right. What influence can this have on the European universities, or Europeanization of universities?

Johan Östling 22:05
Yes, that is a very good question. Well, one basic idea underlying these ideas of Europeanization processes is, of course, that we need international exchange, international connections to promote science and scholarship, and if you tend to prefer a national framework that is excluded from the agenda, it's not something you can combine with a Europeanization idea or an idea of international exchange.

Natalie von der Lehr 22:39
I'm also thinking about issues like academic freedom, maybe politicians may be wanting to steer universities and their teaching and research more than before.

Johan Östling 22:52
That is definitely a threat that we have experienced so far in some parts of Europe, Hungary, for example. My impression is that, overall, in the academic community, we don't see that kind of tendencies very strong yet, but things can change definitely. And what we see is, rather, I would say, in Europe that there is a strong support for research. The European Research Council has, as I mentioned, been a success, very much so, and hopefully that will continue to be the case also in the new framework program.

Natalie von der Lehr 23:32
So you have been a Pro Futura Fellow a while ago and been in residence at SCAS during spring of 2013 and autumn 2014. So first of all, what was your experience of the multi- and interdisciplinary research environment at SCAS?

Johan Östling 23:46
I was there, as you mentioned, during two semesters, and in between, I spent a year with my family in Berlin. That's also as a part of the Pro Futura program. All these experiences, both in Uppsala at SCAS and in Berlin, they were very rewarding and enriching. When I was in SCAS I was commuting, my family lived in Lund, I had quite small children then, and that was a bit of a challenge to be in Uppsala Monday to Friday and then go back. But I had a really good time there. I especially enjoyed, of course, meeting the other fellows and from many different backgrounds. I had my background in a quite traditional subject of humanities, traditional Department of History. I had been as a young post doc at the Interdisciplinary Center for Research Policy Studies. But this was something different, and I really learned quite a lot, both about different subjects, but also different academic practices in other countries. But it was also interesting to see - I'm not sure how it works now, really, but during my first semester there, it was very much dominated by historical scholarship, archeologists, historians of religion, other kind of history disciplines. But then when I came back from Berlin during my second semester, it was dominated by philosophers. There was a group of philosophers working together, and that also shaped the conversation, I would say. So it was interesting to see how the conversation could have one direction during one semester, and then it changed, and that also influenced how we approached the different themes when we had lunch, for example, together.

Natalie von der Lehr 25:27
Yeah, the lunches, of course. I mean, that's where you sit and discuss with your fellows and so on.

Johan Östling 25:32
Exactly. And also, I think coming from, in my case, having a Swedish background, I had some experience from other European universities, I had been an Erasmus student, I've been abroad as a PhD student, etc. But having lunch with a professor from Harvard sitting there every day, or an associate professor from Sorbonne, that really broadens your horizon very much so. And it makes, I think, the thresholds less evident if you would like to be part of a more international community, to have this daily conversation with those stars from the most prestigious universities in the world.

Natalie von der Lehr 26:13
In what way has SCAS then and your time as a Pro Futura Fellow shaped your further career in academia? Yes,

Johan Östling 26:20
Yes, I've been thinking about that quite a lot in recent times, since I was in Berlin, as I mentioned, as a Pro Futura Fellow, and then I spent one semester at the Max Planck Institute to the History of Science, one of the most important hubs when it comes to the history of science. And during that period, I could together with a Norwegian colleague who happened to be there, Erling Sandmo, he has passed away now, but he was there then, together with me, and we together explored this new, emerging field of history of knowledge, what the German call "Wissensgeschichte", not "Wissenschaftsgeschichte", the history of science, but "Wissensgeschichte", a broader, more socially and culturally formed history of knowledge. And we were there, we explored this, and decided to go back to Scandinavia and launch a kind of Scandinavian network devoted to the history of knowledge. And that is how it all started for us here in Lund, but also in a larger Scandinavian context, to try to introduce, develop, and also consolidate the history of knowledge as a new scholarly field. So it really started during my year in Berlin as a Pro Futura Fellow, and then it developed further in the latter half of the 2010s.

Natalie von der Lehr 27:43
Is there any advice that you would like to share with the fellows that are in residence at SCAS right now, or any other young career researchers, so to say?

Johan Östling 27:52
What I experienced was, as I mentioned, was that this is a great opportunity to really broaden your horizons. Many young scholars, me included, had a quite specific niche. We were specialized in a particular field or subfield or sub sub field our discipline. But this is an opportunity to meet an archeologist or an economist and have conversation there, and also learned about different academic cultures, of course, how it works in Germany or in Canada, and that is a great opportunity, I would say. So that is something that fellows, and especially young fellows, should really embrace while in residence.

Natalie von der Lehr 28:37
Thank you very much for joining me in this episode and our listeners, of course.

Johan Östling 28:41
Thank you for having me.

Natalie von der Lehr 28:43
And thank you for listening to SCAS Talks, a podcast by the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. In this episode, I have talked to Johan Östling, Professor of History at Lund University and director of the Lund Center for the History of Knowledge. We talked about his research on the history of universities, and his ongoing project on the Europeanization of universities. And this was the first episode on our theme "Knowledge, epistemes, universities". SCAS Talks features a broad variety of topics, which is a reflection of the multi- and interdisciplinary research environment at the Collegium. We're sure that there is something of interest for everyone. Tune in, find your favorite topic or surprise yourself with something new. And as always, we are very happy if you can recommend SCAS Talks to your colleagues and friends. Subscribe to us and you won't miss any new content. SCAS Talks is available on podbean, Apple podcast, Spotify and most podcast apps. I would like to thank Johan Östling once again for talking to me, and thanks to you for listening. Bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai