Per Anton Runesson

About me

I am a social and cultural historian of bodies, both human and animal. In 2021, I defended my doctoral dissertation Blod, kött och tårar: Kroppslig erfarenhet i Sverige ca 1600–1700 [Blood, Flesh and Tears: Bodily Experience in Sweden c. 1600–1750]. From a phenomenological perspective and using about 800 court cases of various crimes, I studied how ordinary people understood the body to function, departing from how they experienced it. I show them to have embraced a functional understanding of the body, rooted in the fact that they needed their bodies for purposes of work and for religious purposes. The dissertation was awarded a Torsten Jancke memorial prize by Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy for Swedish Folk Culture.

A scholarship from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2021 funded my first post-doc project “Fetal Remains in Early Modern Sweden”. Some of the research was carried out in collaboration with archaeologists from Stockholm University and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

As of 2022, I am a post-doc researcher at the University of Stockholm and University of Strathclyde (Glasgow). In “Living with Livestock: Human-Animal Relations in Early Modern Households”, I explore what ontological assumptions about livestock made early modern interspecies interaction and collaboration possible.

Finally, I organize the Early Modern Seminar at the department – please write me if you would like to take part!