Academic ConnectDuties and Project descriptions
The Department of Economic History is advertising at least three PhD positions, with starting date 12 January 2026. All three positions are part of specific research projects.
Research level education comprises four years, full-time, corresponding to 240 higher education credits, of which the PhD thesis constitutes 165 credits and courses 75 credits. The education is financed through a combination of scholarship funds during year 1-3 followed by a doctoral student position during year 4.
The following projects are searching for one PhD student each:
Project 1. Creating value of hazardous waste: recycling in the automobile industry, 1970-2020s
While reuse and recycling have always been part of human practice, post-war consumerism led to an unprecedented increase in the volume of waste and made Sweden one of the leading per capita waste producers in Europe in the 1970s. Parallel to the growth of waste was the awakening of modern environmentalism and 30 years later, Sweden had transformed its economy to become a technological leader in advanced recycling services, not only for household waste, but also for complex industrial waste, such as the recycling of automobiles and household appliances. In today's large-scale transitions in the automotive industry, a deeper understanding of adaptability, flexibility, as well as inertia and inactivity, is central, especially in relation to complex and hazardous materialities such as battery cell production.
By looking at the dynamics of the past, this project intends to highlight the challenges and opportunities for future paths by examining the materialities, industrial organization and policies behind the growth and transformation of the recycling sector in the Swedish economy from 1970 to 2020. The project is based on a historical approach to understand the conditions for the recycling and manufacturing industries by uncovering long-term processes. The basis for this project is the construction and analysis of largely unexplored archival material as well as rich material in the form of a series of reports produced by the Swedish authorities. As a Ph D. student, you are expected to study the drivers behind the transformation of scrap trading and processing firms into high-tech recycling firms, and how the market has been consolidated into a limited number of large players. The scaling and consolidation of the market structure will be explored by focusing on the key players that have remained in business during the study period.
Project qualifications: background in economic history, history, history of ideas or similar disciplines. Documented experience of archival research and qualitative methods is qualifying for the position.
More information: project leader Daniel Normark, Daniel.normark@ekhist.uu.se
Project 2. Economic Outcomes of the ´Entrepreneur´ during the Expansion of the Welfare State
To what extent do the self-employed represent a productive force in the economy? The share of self-employment—by contrast to wage earners—in the labor market over the past 100 years has followed a U-shaped curve: high levels before World War II, low levels during the mid-20th century welfare-state expansion, and then back to high levels again in recent decades. In this project, the PhD student will apply econometric techniques on micro-level data to investigate the causes of, and effects stemming from, the sharp decline in self-employment during the mid-20th century.
The project involves digitizing Stockholm’s tax and population registers, covering the entire population of Stockholm from 1940 to around 1970, in collaboration with other researchers at the Department of Economic History. These registers contain highly detailed individual-level information on income from self-employment and wage work, as well as occupation and industry. The data will be processed automatically using machine-learning methods through a model already developed within the project.
Project qualifications: A relevant background includes a degree in economic history, sociology, data science, economics, political science (or a related field). Documented skills in econometrics/statistics and/or data science are meritorious.
More information: project leader Jakob Molinder, jakob.molinder@ekhist.uu.se