Stay Home

On Friday November 8, 2024, PhD Fellow at STAY HOME, Katrine Rønsig Larsen successfully defended her dissertation. The dissertation studies family violence from the perspectives of history of emotions and history of experience. In three case studies, 1) Articles on child abuse in Danish newspapers, 1960-2000, 2) Descriptions of family violence in divorce cases, 1960-1980, and 3) Accounts of intimate violence in interviews with women at women’s shelters during the Covid-19 pandemic, 2020-2022, Katrine studies violence as a historical contingent phenomenon and experience shaped by cultural understandings of violence, norms, and emotional scripts.

Among her main findings, Katrine highlights that: “..the dissertation develops a methodology for analyzing and understanding historical emotional experiences of family violence grounded in the concepts of emotional echoes, emotional formation, and emotional frontiers, and demonstrates its utility in analyses of three different source materials. Importantly, the methodological tools presented in the dissertation can be applied to future studies of family violence in other historical and cultural contexts and utilizing other types of source materials. It thereby points to new avenues for future research.”

The assessment committee consisted of Professor Niklas Olsen, Chair (University of Copenhagen), Professor Joanna Bourke (University of London, Birkbeck), and Associate professor Marie Eriksson (Linné University). Among other praising words the committee described Katrine’s dissertation as “excellent”, “extremely rich and inspiring”, as well as “well-written, well-structured, and well-argued”.

After the defence, Katrine was celebrated at a reception at the Saxo-Institute with bubbles, cake, presents, friends, family, and colleagues, as well as a heart-warming speech by her main supervisor, professor Karen Vallgårda.