Petra Österlund

Petra Österlund is an Associate Professor of Ethnology at Södertörn University's Department of History and Contemporary Studies, serving as subject coordinator for ethnology and the Europe program while teaching across the Europe program and Teacher Education curriculum.

Her academic background includes:

• PhD from Lund University (2007) with thesis: "Music and Politics in the Shadow of Nazism: Kurt Atterberg and Swedish-German Musical Relations"
• Postdoctoral project at Uppsala University (2009-2011) funded by the Swedish Research Council

Österlund's research centers on historical ethnology examining Swedish-German relations through critical discourse analysis and discourse historical methodology. She specializes in Cold War cultural politics, Nazi-era musical diplomacy, and transnational ethnological exchanges between 1930-1989, integrating philological approaches to analyze language-culture interfaces in political contexts.

She secured major research funding from Östersjöstiftelsen for the project "Between East and West: Ideology, aesthetics and politics in music relations between Sweden and the GDR 1949-1989" (2016-2021) and Swedish Research Council support for her postdoctoral work on Swedish-German ethnology contacts. Her collaborative projects involve scholars like Ursula Geisler (Musicology) and Henrik Rosengren (History).