STAY HOME: The Home during the Corona Crisis - and after
The STAY HOME project documents experiences and practices, and identifies new insights regarding the home, which have emerged during the Corona Crisis. Focusing on digital practices, spatial organization, existential experiences, and domestic violence the project trawls ethnographic archives collected by our collaborators.
Funded by the Carlsberg Foundation STAY HOME is conducted by an interdisciplinary team from the Faculties of Theology and Humanities at University of Copenhagen, Architecture at The Royal Danish Academy and Science and Technology Studies at the IT University of Copenhagen. The team analyses ethnographic data in order to uncover insights that may benefit future homes and the life led there. The interdisciplinary approach is developed in an ongoing exchange with historical research into the home and its social, spatial, technological and existential implications conducted at the Danish National Research Foundation Centre for Privacy Studies.
ARCHITECTURE. Residence and Social Distancing in Corona Times
Through research-by-design the project will investigate the spatial organisation of the home during lockdown where the private dwelling has to accommodate public activities such as work, education, religious practices, and has in novel ways become the setting of digitalised social life.
FAMILY HISTORY. The Family under Pressure
The project investigates individual and collective experiences of violence in the family in Denmark during the corona pandemic. By combining historical case studies with studies of experiences during the pandemic, it analyses how the experiences of violence are historically contingent and culturally formed.
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES. Digitalisation of the Home
The project examines the effects of increased digitalization of the home during the Corona Crisis. It approaches the home as part of a larger digital network connecting it to public authorities, big tech providers, health systems, local food providers, workplaces, institutions, friends etc., and is interested in changes to the connections, boundaries and thresholds of the home brought about by the lockdown. Through ethnographic material centering on everyday experiences with technology in domestic spaces, the project explores how subtle everyday negotiations and practices (re-)configure the private sphere.
THEOLOGY. Belief and Existence in the Home
The project investigates existential experiences in the home during the corona crisis analyzed through the theology of Paul Tillich (1886-1965). The corona crisis is studied as a changing moment in history through the theological concept “Kairos” (the right or critical moment). Furthermore, the project is concerned with existential experiences of courage and anxiety, which might have appeared in relation to the changed everyday life in the home.
PI
Mette Birkedal Bruun, professor of Church History, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, director of the Danish National Research Foundation Centre for Privacy Studies
Co-PIs
- Brit Ross Winthereik, professor at Responsible Innovation and Design, Department of Technology, Management and Economics, DTU, co-PI of Deltagelsens grammatik: Hvad kan vi lære af den øjeblikkelige og gennemgribende digitalisering af hverdagslivet under coronakrisen? (VELUX Fonden).
- Karen A. Vallgårda, associate professor of History, University of Copenhagen, PI of The Politics of Family Secrecy (DFF).
- Peter Thule Kristensen, professor in History of Architecture and Interiors, Head of the master programme Spatial design, Institute of Architecture and Design, The Royal Danish Academy.
Core Researchers
- Anne-Milla Kristensen, PhD-fellow, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen.
- Katja P. de Neergaard, PhD-fellow, IT University of Copenhagen.
- Katrine Rønsig Larsen, PhD-fellow, the SAXO Institute, University of Copenhagen.
- Nicholas Thomas Lee, Postdoc, The Royal Danish Academy, School of Architecture.
Affiliated PRIVACY researchers (historical perspective)
- Anni Haahr Henriksen, PhD-fellow (history of notions of the mind)
- Lars Nørgaard, assistant professor (church history)
- Natacha Klein Käfer, postdoc (history of medicine)
- Natalie Körner, assistant professor (architecture)
- Jesper Jakobsen, postdoc (history of books, prints and regulation)
- Paolo Astorri, postdoc (history of law)
- Søren Frank Jensen, PhD-fellow (church history)
Editor
Emma Klakk Christensen, MSc in Sociology
Read interviews and other coverage on our outreach blog (Danish).
Read and comment on our blog posts on our research blog (English).
External partners
- Dannerstiftelsen
- Nationalmuseet
- Center for Digital Welfare, ITU
- The Techno-Anthropology Lab, AAU
- Lockdown Reading, UCPH. A Carlsberg Foundation partner project.
Perspective panel
- Anders K. Munk, The Techno-Anthropology Lab, AAU
- Andreas Bandak, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, UCPH
- Joanna Saad-Sulonen, Center for Digital Welfare, ITU
- Johanne S.T. Kristensen, Systematic Theology Section, UCPH
- Kirsten Marie Raahauge, Spaces of Danish Welfare, the Royal Danish Academy
- Mai Heide Ottosen, The Danish Center for Social Science Research, The Ministry of Health
International reference group
- Prof. Günter Thomas, Chair of Systematic Theology, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
- Prof. Maarten Delbeke, Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zürich
- Prof. Noortje Marres, Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick
- Prof. Pirjo Markkola, University of Tampere, The Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences
Research Networks
The STAY HOME project will host the academic conference STAY HOME: New perspectives on the home on the 10th-11th of November 2022 at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen. The aim of the conference is to share and discuss new perspectives on the home – in particular perspectives that emerge during crises and may inform future conceptualizations of human dwelling. We invite speakers to deliver research and design perspectives on the home as a physical, social, digital, and existential place in past, present, and future.
Read more about the conference and our call for papers here.
PI
Mette Birkedal Bruun
Email: mbb@teol.ku.dk
Phone: (+45) 353-23787
Editor
Emma Klakk Christensen
Email: emma.klakk@teol.ku.dk
