Bauer's History

 In the past days I have been teaching a class in the teachers programe on the subject of different educational systems. During one of the seminars some students were rather critical towards the principle of free choice of schools and tax-funded privately-run schools, which led me to actually talk to them about the principles behind freedom of choice in the swedish educational system. Having a background in the Swedish left party, this was a rather intresting task since I on the private level is strongly against private initiatives in schools but here had to explain and defend the idea.  In Sweden there does not exist a school were students pays tution (there are a few hybrids of private school where you pay for lodging that in the works similar to a tution, but those can be counted on the fingers of one hand). Yet we have highly criticized system where people can create private schools that are founded by public means and also take out some of that founding in revenue. Closel...

 In recent years I have become more and more obsessed with AI, much like everyone else in society. In this regard I am very fascinated by two different aspects were the first is simply the implementation of AI in my own discipline of history. In this regard I can mainly see two were clearcut utilizations of artificial intelligence were the first in software such as Transkribus, which transcribes old hand-written records to modern print in a matter of minutes. Transkribus have actually become smart enough to have a 99,3 percent correctness, compared to the human 99,7 percent correctness. Even though we still have a bit to wander with transkribus it will probably change what subjects historians can dwelve into, since one of the key difficulties with older periods is the material aspect and reading of texts. Once this obstacle is overcome it would perhaps not require as much training to go into the medieval or early modern period. A second aspect of this is that AI will probably, give...

 For the past weeks I have been teaching a course at the university which is about the history of migration to and from Sweden. This is an area that it is not unresearched, but it has been neglected in conventional history writing. The consequence of this is that it is almost impossible to write a comprehensive synthesis - fancy historian word for large oversight - on the subject. There exists one try to do this, Mattias Tydén and Ingvar Svanbergs a thousand year of immigration (Swedish "Tusen år av invandring") which aims to discuss immigration to Sweden from 1000 a.c. until the early 2000’s. This book is also the main book you can use in teaching, since it is rather one of a kind. In this regard I also have the outmost respect for Tydén and Svanbergs work, it is a introduction to the field of Swedish migration that is of uttermost use if you are a novice on the subject and for instance writing a thesis.  This does however not mean that book is without it’s flaws and as I ha...

 During the summer I have read Ken Follets trilogy in which the reader get to follow three families during the 20th century. I did not really read it to learn something new about the 20th century, even though that is always the consequence of reading. Instead I simply read it as entertainment but in the end, I came to think a bit about why fiction is needed to fully write history.  Starting from some basic level of source criticism it can be stated that Follets writing actually seems to be well researched. Within the areas that connects to my main expertise, I did not found any major errors and the errors that existed can simply be seen as a result of it being fiction rather than fact. The only thing that actually bothered me was that the family portrayed was so very involved as government officials in the development during 20th century which seemed a bit unlikely, but still perhaps Follets point is also to describe the western world history rather than telling a realistic st...