About the centre

Understanding the human experience of rural-urban transitions

At TRANSITION – Centre for Changing Urban and Rural Lives, we explore how the transition from rural to urban-centric societies has shaped people’s lived experiences throughout the 20th century. Researchers from the fields of history, literature and sociolinguistics collaborate to unravel this transition from a bottom-up perspective linking insights into the everyday lives of ordinary people to broader historical contexts, collective ideas, language and policies.

At TRANSITION, we ask:

  • How have rural-urban transitions influenced people’s lived experiences?
  • How have these experiences shaped collective ideas, language, and practices?

Denmark’s unique archival resources—autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, dialect recordings, and literary texts—offer an exceptional foundation for studying how mobility, language, and cultural identity evolve over time. By combining qualitative and quantitative methods, we uncover new insights into transitions and their impact on people, places, and communities.

Our research approach

The research at TRANSITION is structured around three key analytical entry points:

  • Encounters – How individuals experience new cultural and linguistic settings during transitions.
  • Places – How urban and rural spaces transform and shape individual and collective experiences.
  • Lifespans – How people’s experiences with transitions unfold across their lives.

Our work focusses on what is referred to as the long 20th century, spanning from the first effects of industrialization on urbanization to contemporary transformations. We use an interdisciplinary methodology, integrating archival research, digital humanities tools, and theoretical innovations in transition studies to develop new insights that extend beyond the Danish context. 

Centre structure and organisation

TRANSITION is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation and represents a collaboration between the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Copenhagen and the National Museum of Denmark. The centre is hosted by and located at the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics (NorS) at the University of Copenhagen.

Contact us

For inquiries, reach out at transition@hum.ku.dk