Katarina Friberg

I have a Ph.D. in History from Växjö University (2005). The Ph.D. project was a comparative study of the organisation of consumer co-operative societies in Sweden and Britain. I have continued to do comparative and transnational historical studies of co-operative organisations, fair trade, town planning and humanitarian aid.

Presently my work focuses on the conditions for voluntary aid organizations engaged in post-war relief after the Second World War; the challenges and opportunities of state coordination and how need is measured and determined. I am also interested in issues related to how voluntary organizations raise resources and decide how to allocate their funds. This interest has led to studies of accounts and the practices, procedures and ethics of accounting.

At SCCSS I am engaged in a cross-disciplinary study examining the evaluations of projects funded by Allmänna arvsfonden. The project group of four is guided by Filip Wijkström as project leader.

As researcher, I have been affiliated to academic institutions in Sweden and Britain: The Institute of Contemporary History at Södertörn University in Stockholm, Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne and as Leverhulme Visiting Scholar at Teesside University, Middlesbrough.

As a lecturer, I work in higher eduction, compulsory school, upper secondary school and popular education contexts. Besides teaching regular courses in history I have also taught courses in human rights and environmentalism. Since 2012 I have been engaged in academic course on organisation and management in co-operative organizations for employees and elected member of Riksbyggen, Folksam and Kooperativa Förbundet, via the Department of Economic History at Uppsala University.

Selected Publications

Workings of Co-operation: A Comparative Study of Consumer Co-operative Organisation in Britain and Sweden, 1860 to 1970. Växjö: Växjö University Press, 2005. 508 pp. (thesis). Open access http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A771745&dswid=-6058

”A Co-operative Take on Free Trade: International Ambitions and Regional Initiatives in International Co-operative Trade”, in A Global History of Consumer Co-operation since 1850. Hilson m fl. (reds). 2017. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04336-54-4

Friberg Katarina och Bengt U. Strömberg. ”Konsumentkooperationens resa över tid och rum”, in Civilsamhället i det transnationella rummet. Eds. Wijkström et al. 2017. Stockholm: European Civil Society Press, s. 281-312. ISBN 978-91-86641-08-5

“Accounts along the aid chain: administering a moral economy.” Journal of Global Ethics 11 (2015) no.2. Open Access http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17449626.2015.1054563

“Negotiating Consumer and Producer Interests: A Challenge for the Co-op and Fair Trade.” ‘The Hidden Alternative’? Co-operative Values: Past, Present and Future. Anthony Webster et al. (Eds). Manchester: Manchester University Press 2012, and New York: United Nations University Press, 2012. 115–136.

“Visions and Organisation: Kooperativa Förbundet and the Social Question.” Co-operatives and the Social Question: The Co-operative Movement in Northern and Eastern Europe, c. 1880–1950. Mary Hilson, Pirjo Markkola, and Ann-Catrin Östman (eds). Cardiff: Welsh Academic Press, 2012. 57–71.

Friberg, Katarina, Hilson, Mary och Vall Natasha. (2007) ”Reflections on trans-national comparative history from an Anglo-Swedish perspective”, Historisk Tidskrift (127):4, s. 717-737.