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Methodology

Categorisation of study circles

The first step was gathering all the information on the study circles by going through the material in the NSU Archive held at the Danish National Archive in Copenhagen. Read about that here.

 

But once the data was collected, another part of the research started. To analyse the shifts in conversations, I decided to categorise the study circles. Which wasn't as easy as that might sound. One of the first things that I noticed when going through all the study programs of NSU, was the variety of topics studied. I wanted to know if I could find shifts in topics discussed, and how this developed over time. Were these trends easily explained when taking into consideration the overall development of Nordic society in the same years, or was there something particular about the study program of NSU?

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First of all I started classifying the data. I decided to first of all focus on the categories as used in universities, as this was also how the minutes of the first meeting in Lysebu (Norway) described how the study circles would be organised: natural science, social science and humanities and their respective departments, like psychology, education, sociology, law, etc. Often a single circle would focus on several such categories and when this was the case I would label the circle as being ‘interdisciplinary’ and belonging to several categories. 

Working groups were not taken into consideration, as often these would overlap with study circles and for only a few years the data for working groups was actually known.

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Interdisciplinary

In order to classify the data, it was necessary to decide on definitions used. ‘Interdisciplinary’ is used for circles that transcend the borders of their overall school. For this study, I decided that a circle looking at both mathematics and physics is not interdisciplinary (for example circle 1. Mathematical structures appropriate for describing physical events from 1951, and circle 12. Ethical methodological questions viewed from a philosophical and theological perspective from that same year). A circle looking at this historical and structural perspective of human sciences however is interdisciplinary, looking at both what we would now call the social sciences and history. 


This is a very specific understanding of ‘interdisciplinary’ and it does not mean that the circles excluded from this category were in no way looking beyond their own field of study. One could argue that all circles aimed for interdisciplinary work by looking at a topic rather than a field of study, by being open towards people from other fields to join in the discussions, etc. What I have aimed at here is to look at the description of the topics of the study circle themselves, not at what was actually discussed. Going through all the lectures and discussions of every single circle was also beyond the scope of this research. Therefore the data is rather limited and intended only to be used to get a general overview of trends throughout the years. 

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Topics

Besides the categories of fields studied in the study circles, it was interesting to note certain topics that were either recurrent in several circles in a particular year or coming back in different forms throughout the years. Discerning these topics was not done systematically, but rather intuitively. They were recurring themes that stood out when studying the study programs in detail. For instance ‘Marx’ in the 1960s and 1970s, and ‘humanity’ in the 1950s and 1960s. 

 

Research

At first glance it often wasn’t very clear which field of study the circle aimed at. Certain concepts are understood differently depending on the time. For instance circle 6 in 1966 was called ‘creativity’, and only by looking at the description it was clear how this was approached. The circle was interested at looking at different forms of creativity in science, artistic and technology. With the specific aim to look at the educational value of creativity. Highly interdisciplinary!


Another example is the circle ‘research strategy’ which was introduced in 1965 and returned in 1966. Only from looking at the larger description it became clear that this dealt with policy and political strategies around research. So it was labelled as ‘education’ and ‘politics’.

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