Martina Koegeler-Abdi is a researcher at Human Rights Studies. Her current project "Krigets eko i svenska krigsbarns familjehistorierna" documents the experiences of Swedish "children born of war" – that is, children born to Swedish mothers and German fathers who had been soldiers in Nazi Germany.

NB! Send an e-mail to lena.halldenius@mrs.lu.se for a copy of Martina's paper. 

At this work-in-progress seminar, Martina Koegeler-Abdi will present findings from her project Echoes of War (Crafoord Foundation). Based on two sets of multigenerational family histories from children of Swedish-born German women who returned to Sweden on the White Buses in 1945, she explores both memories of the mothers and how experiences of war and familial ties to Nazism impacted the children (as Swedish ‘children born of war’) and their grandchildren later in life. 

A draft of a key thread in this material and an outline will be pre-circulated. The aim of the seminar is to get feedback on how to best organize the writing and on whether to aim for a book manuscript or two articles (one empirical/one conceptual).

Martina Koegeler-Abdi's research interests include family history, vulnerability and memory studies, trans/nationalism as well as the changing historical representations of race, gender, and childhood.