Erik Bengtsson

Erik Bengtsson

Senior lecturer, Associate professor

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Personal profile

Research

I am senior lecturer in Economic History, since December 2020. Before that, I was a postdoc here at Lund 2015-2017 and associate senior lecturer 2017-2020. I came to Lund from Gothenburg where I got my PhD in 2013. I became docent in Economic History in 2019.

My research interests are especially in two broad fields. One is historical living standards, material culture, wealth and inequality, especially in Europe since the seventeenth century. The second field is historical political economy, including political history, focusing on the period c. 1790-1950. I am especially interested in social relations as mediated by politics, the distribution of power in society, and democratization and pre-democratic political systems. The two fields also inter-relate, of course, and at the moment I am for example working on trying to understand the implications of the Mexican Revolution for economic inequality, as well as the connections between democratization and socio-economic inequality in Sweden.

As of 2021 I do research especially in three projects.

In 2019-2022, I lead a research project financed by the Swedish Research Council on incomes in Sweden 1862-1970. The researchers in this project are myself, Jakob Molinder (Uppsala) and Svante Prado (Gothenburg).

From 2020 to 2025 I am also active as a researcher in a large research programme led by professor Jenny Andersson of Uppsala University, "Neoliberalism in the Nordics". In this project I will work on the transformations of wage bargaining and economic policy in the Nordic countries since the 1960s.

From 2020 to 2023 Mats Olsson and I lead a project on material living standards and material culture in Sweden c. 1680 to 1860, building mainly on probate inventories. Marcus Falk is writing his doctoral dissertation within this project.

Teaching

I teach general economic history as well as more specifically labour market history and the history of economic ideas. I am the course director for three undergraduate courses: World Economic History (spring semesters), The Economic and Social History of Sweden (autumn semesters), and The Rise and Fall of the Swedish Model (every second spring semester).

I am also course director of a tutorial course for masters students, "The History of Economic Inequality" (spring semesters).

Outside of Lund I also have lecturer experience from Gothenburg, KTH in Stockholm and the University of Sao Paulo.

Societal impact

In terms of outreach, I very much enjoy participating in wider discussions in society based on my research and areas of expertise.

UKÄ subject classification

  • Economic History
  • Work Sciences

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