Rural and Urban Change in the Long Twentieth Century

TRANSITION-session at Dansk Historikermøde 2026

We are organising the session “Land og by i forandring i det lange 20. århundrede” (Rural and Urban Change in the Long Twentieth Century) at this year’s Dansk Historikermøde.

Date: 25-08-2026
Time: 15:00-16:30
Location: South Campus, Building 8A, 4^th Floor, Room 8A.4.17

Our session explores how relations between land and city have shaped Danish history across the long twentieth century. Rather than treating rural and urban life as separate worlds, the session focuses on the transitions, encounters, movements, and cultural negotiations that have connected them.

• Mikkel Thelle, Senior Researcher & Lead Investigator
  Erfaringer og transition. Forslag til en moderne urban-rural historie (Experiences and Transition: Towards a Modern Rural–Urban History)

• Torben Jelsbak, Associate Professor & Lead Investigator
  Hvad kan romaner og anden skønlitterær fiktion fortælle os om transitioner mellem land og by? (What Can Fiction Tell Us About Rural–Urban Transitions?)

• Kristian Aarup, Postdoc & Junior Investigator
  “Fødtere” og “førtere” – Kulturmøder mellem land og by, c. 1900 (“Born Here” and “Brought Here”: Cultural Encounters between Country and City, c. 1900)

• Ida Bzorek, PhD student & Junior Investigator
  “Siden har jeg så talt almindeligt dansk”: Dialektideologier i Nationalmuseets Etnologiske Undersøgelser (NEU) (“Since Then, I Have Spoken Normal Danish”: Dialect Ideologies in the Danish National Museum’s Ethnological Surveys (NEU))

• Lise Bødtker Sunde, PhD student & Junior Investigator
  Familie- og husstandsdannelse i danske landby-migranters livsforløb, 1870–1921

Together, the talks ask how large-scale societal transformation can be studied from the perspective of lived experience: through urban–rural histories, fiction, cultural encounters, dialect ideologies, migration, family formation, and everyday life.