PhD Fellow Viktor Wreström awarded with scholarship
Last week, PhD Fellow at Centre for Privacy Studies Viktor Wretström was in Stockholm to participate in the yearly meeting of Föreningen Svenska Rominstitutets Vänner [The Association for Friends of the Swedish Institute in Rome]. Here he was awarded with their scholarship of 50 000 SEK for a research semester in Rome.
The stay in Italy will begin in September this year, and is going to be an instrumental part of Viktors PhD project "Urban Gardens: A Public Place for Private Activities". He describes his project and the goal of going to Rome thus:
This research project, will study how gardens and parks functioned as a middling area and negotiation space between public elements and private activities occurring within the urban landscape. Specifically regarding how parks and urban gardens are:
- dynamic locations for intermingling of individuals across the social strata on different levels
- a open space that contains secluded places enabling both private conversations and encounters as well as public gatherings, and with this the problem of control and safety within the garden landscape.
- tools for peer-to-peer rivalry and a source of social capital for its owner and visitors.
- disruptions, but also intrinsically connected parts, of the urban landscape.
The project is pursued à la longue durée focusing on the changing functions and accessibility of urban parks from antiquity until the end of the early modern period. To enable this study an extended stay in Rome will be an invaluable asset, for its long history of urban parks, both private and public, and for its many remaining parks that show the continuation, changes and thoughts surrounding green urban spaces from antiquity to today. Examples of sites that will be studied, both historically and in situ, will be the gardens (horti, now villas) of the Pincio, the ruins of the many sacred groves (luci) surrounding the Palatine and, just on the outskirts of Rome, the ruined sanctuary (nemus) of Diana by Lake Nemi. That this extended stay can occur at such a vibrant and well-established research environment as provided by the Swedish research institute in Rome will even further benefit this project.