New voices in cultural psychologies – The world’s first cultural psychologists

The study of cultural psychology: A student perspective

When entering The Niels Bohr Professorship Centre of Cultural Psychology (NBPCCP) as a master student, you are presented to many unusual and exceptional concepts: mutual respect, unlimited curiosity for anything, genuine learning (rather than being taught), and trust. As a student at NBPCCP, I can reflect on the fact that there is almost no comparison between what I was taught about psychology at an undergraduate level in the same university and what I have learned at NBPCCP—this could be due to the fact that cultural psychology is not only concerned with the field of psychology, but also anthropology, sociology, and history, among others. The four semesters in the program offer a range of academic activities and introduce the students to some of the basic themes, theories, concepts and methods used by cultural psychologists; examples of these topics are: urban environments, migration, creativity, collective memory, education, diagnoses, as well as more meta-theoretical issues, such as models of causality and the history of psychology, which are taught to the students by international, experienced researchers. In contrast to any other master program at the same university, the one in Cultural Psychology and Social Practice prepares the student to conduct high-level research with adequate and culture-sensitive theoretical and methodological tools. This is done through supervision and education in the areas of observation techniques, methodological training, explanations of ways to enter the field of research and social practices as a cultural psychologist and the possibility to participate in weekly international seminars on unresolved topics in science and practice. The latter are informal seminars conducted at NBPCCP every Wednesday where we (i.e., students, faculty, and international visitors) develop research ideas and take part in knowledge construction on equal terms. After finishing a master at NBPCCP, the students can apply for a PhD since the center is also home to the first international doctoral and post-doctoral network in cultural psychology. At the doctoral level, the center focuses on four content areas; cultural psychology and aesthetics in urban living, creativity processes in everyday social practices, interventions in the globalizing world, and epistemology of the social sciences.

The world’s first cultural psychologists

With a sample from this years graduated master students, I here outline a few themes they were involved in. The range of topics covered by the work of the first wave of master students is considerable. One such topic considers the frames of different life settings. Lars Christian Sønderby (2015) investigated the processes in and out of loneliness and concluded that interventions should revolve around changes in environment and social skills training. Claudia Gallas and Casper Andersen (2015) developed a similar idea (i.e. frames) when working with home as something that we “do” instead of something we have, to which they concluded that a strengthened focus on the everyday life and home as a physical and social arena for clinical intervention is to be empathized. They used a narrative analytical approach with a focus on small stories and everyday life to look at how five Danish psychiatric outpatients across the Jutlandic peninsula construct their meaning of home in relation to their treatment and diagnosis.

Another group of students, Jensine Ingerslev Nedergaard, Nadia Ziab El-Ziab and Cecilia Schøler Nielsen, focused on meaning making in their master thesis. Nedergaard (2015) focused on scars as personal-cultural signs which operate as memory devices in skin and suggested, that skin be understood as a medium through which the world is understood, communicated with, and through which identity is created; thus it becomes the focus of individual meaning making. Her thesis was built on a single case which was represented by a narrative and semi-structured interview with a woman who had two Caesarean sections. An interesting feature of her case is that she only has one visible scar but explains her experiences by identifying herself as having in fact two scars. Cecilia Schøler Nielsen (2015) set out to investigate the practices of street art and graffiti in a Danish context, in order to give voice to the artists behind it and attempt to reflect on whether society's negative attitudes towards street and graffiti artists are well-founded or based on several biases. El-Ziab (2015) focused on the positive and negative experiences in nostalgia within a study that looked at the unfolding process by which nostalgic experiences arise. To capture the unfolding process of nostalgia it is important to explore how to trigger such nostalgic experiences. The study hypothesized that environmental surroundings can trigger nostalgic experiences if a person is being brought back to some personal memories of his past. Krause-Kjær (2015) evolved her work around an alternative area by trying to understand how emotions and attitudes are transmitted between generations through music as a cultural tool. She concluded that cultural tools should be considered transmitters of emotions in relation to personal experience. Her work—done in Brazil in collaboration with colleagues from Pernambuco¹—puts new light into the dynamic interaction between individuals and culture.

It is important that the best of the research done in local context quickly reaches international readership. This has not been the case in “traditional” university systems where students were supposed to be limited to “study the prescribed curriculum” rather than develop new ideas together with other, more established, researchers. In addition to the preceding examples, results of ongoing work are already getting published (Sønderby & Wagoner, 2013; Christensen & Wagoner, 2015; Nedergaard, Valsiner, & Marsico, 2015). The 8th International Conference on the Dialogical Self (2014), The 7th Congress of the European Society on Family Relations (2014) and the 2015 International Society for Theoretical Psychology (ISTP) on Resistance and Renewal have also been platforms which the center's young scholars have used to present their work (Andersen, 2014; Krause-Kjær, 2014; Lyberth, 2014; Marsico, Chaudhary, Valsiner & Lyberth, 2015; Nedergaard, 2014; Krause-Kjær, 2015; Nedergaard, 2015; Eckerdal, 2015). A defining feature of the new “Aalborg tradition” of higher education in cultural psychology is the encouragement of students to publish their work autonomously from their advisors; and it is starting to bear fruits (Krause-Kjær & Nedergaard, 2015; Terkildsen & Petersen, 2015).

As you can see from the foregoing, the students at NBPCCP study in various fields, in various ways, and with various motivations and goals in sight. This freedom under careful supervision is quite unique and should be maintained and enforced as long as possible in my opinion. The program asks us as students to identify a topic along with the possibility to explore many other topics with supervision from top experts in our field. This is an altogether rare chance to “stick our necks out” without fearing “getting our heads cut off” when making beginners' errors and trying to learn in and from the real scientific world. In the world of cultural psychology, a thrilling “cut the crap” attitude exists which enables researchers to study relevant phenomena. Within cultural psychology at NBPCC, there is respect for students' contributions and at the same time constructive doubt about authority-focused academic bureaucracy. New ideas cannot grow under the administrative frames of old academia. Such freshness of approaching unresolved problems is relevant for any science. I am quite sure no student would easily be able to overcome the major gap between student–teacher, which exists in “regular” academia. In contrast, in the context of the Aalborg cultural psychology study program, that gap is eliminated from the outset.

Conclusion: A promising beginning for new inquiries

Academic environment where distinctions between participants—young and old, experienced and inexperienced—are the basis of unifying their efforts at inquiry are rare. A typical example here is an ordinary university, where gaps are allowed—even promoted—to exist between teachers and students without this being meaningful—perhaps even the opposite. In the educational system, we are first taught not to think, in order to create a gap from student to professor, and afterwards, we are told to strive to reach the other side over this created gap. This is a technique of social control: the power holder (X) sets the powerless (Y) up in a subdominant situation, and then creates the conditions for Y to come to the power role of X by performing tasks that X determines Y should do. This can be productive for transformation of social control practices across generations, but it certainly does not lead to new ideas in science. In contrast, one could stop introducing an imagined gap in the school system and work on the learning instead of forcing the students to get the highest possible grades to reach the other side of the cliff.

What has the unnecessary evil of gap construction, reinforced by curriculum, attendance lists and, first and foremost, the antiquated exams, produced for persons who want to learn, or to engage in science as a whole? My answer here is: not much, compared to the potential which obviously would entail free leaning, curious pursuit of passion for topics, and including what science has shown is actually meaningful learning. The gap between X and Y has led contemporary youth to perceive themselves as “the smallest gear wheel” in a “global treadmill” where future-directedness dictates that fulfilment of duties, immersion in study topics for their own sake, and spending time with family and friends are not efficient and therefore unnecessary, unfruitful activities (Brinkmann, 2014). As a student, it is my sheer conviction that the utmost important features to incorporate in scholars throughout education are autonomy and integrity. This needs to be conducted not with a “hand puppet” manner, where the professor “guides the student” by making a minime, but with empathy, trust, cooperation and with thinking “on the edge of the box” (Tanggaard & Stadil, 2014). Hence, NBPCCP can contribute to play the part in this global issue, by being one of the islands in academia where autonomy, integrity and high-quality science can blossom.