I had the honor to act as Opponent at Kajsa Hult’s PhD Defense (Viva) at Måltidens Hus in Grythyttan the 15’th of November 2024. Great PhD thesis, great dinner, great party, great after party! Thank you, Kajsa and Örebro University!
I and my colleague Hossain Shahriar presented about affective atmospheres at the Nordic Retail and Wholesale Conference (NRWC) 2024 in Helsingborg, Oct 7, 2024. We are working on a paper aimed for Journal of Retailing right now. Stay tuned!
At FEKIS, the national and annual conference for business and management schools in Sweden, I was invited to present and participate in the panel debate “Change in a disruptive world” together with Linnea Claesson, Andreas Ekström, Lena Lid-Falkman, Mia Larson, Jodie Conduit, and Christian Sandström. My topic was my 3-year lasting Riksbanken-project where I set out to empirically develop my theoretical model conflict market (Ulver 2022) with case focus on the market and consumer culture around gang criminality. After the panel debate I and Professor Per Skålén held a workshop on gang criminality as “business practices” an article we are working on at the moment.
At the annual ACR (Association of Consumer Research) in Paris I held three presentations connected to my research. (1) Lifestyled Business Practices: The Case of Criminal Gangs, a paper I am writing with professor Per Skålén, (2) Socio-Ecological Futures: here I was the chair of a special session with Eric Arnould, Carys Egan-Wyer, Jon Bertilsson and Jack Waverley. and (3) Retail Inclusion and Exlusion: a project and paper together with Hossain Shahriar. Voilá!
Spoke at the Skate Gardenon the great festival Way Out West in Gothenburg, Aug, 2024, about our research on sportswashing and sportification, today specifically about skateboard culture in the wake of the Olympics in Paris. Great fun!
Bali! Indonesia! Asa-pacific Association for Consumer Research 2024! I presented about the pop- and consumer culture connected to Swedish gang criminality
First time in the Swedish Riksdagshuset. Presented to 6 out of the Swedish parliament’s 8 parties about “real normative changes” together with the many brilliant people in the Normskifte think tank (Malin Leth, Birgitta Losman, Amelie Silfverstolpe, Anna Velander Gisslén, Mats Huss, and Elisabeth Lindh). Fun!
The 13’th of May 2024, i was invited to talk at the ACLU seminar series at the department of Law at Lund University about my research project “Conflict Market”, and specifically about the case of Swedish “gangfluencers”. On the picture you see me to the left, lawyer Karin Cederlund partner at Sandart & Partners to the right, and Gunilla Welander, lawyer at Reklamombudsmannen, in the middle.
I and Niklas Vallström (Högskolan i Kristianstad and Örebro University) presented our ongoing work on the haunting inside Swedish gangster rap at the 12’th Eiasm Interpretive Consumer Research Workshop, Malaga, Spain, April 17’th-19’th, 2024. How is critical pop culture not only repetitive in itself, but also the critique thereof ? We say that Swedish gangster rap is haunted by unrealised/able futures and has gotten stuck in a deadlock of unpolitical politics in media and in itself. I will update when an article is on the move. Wooohaaaahaha..
Is it not weird that there are not more global protests against sportswashing then there is? Hossain Shahriar and Andrea Lucarelli presented our research on “sportswashing” and the absence of consumer resistance (or should we say activism?) at the 12’th Eiasm Interpretive Consumer Research Workshop, Malaga, Spain, April 17’th-19’th, 2024. Ongoing research but there will be papers published here in the near future.
Me and Professor Jacob Östberg, Stockholm Business School, presented at Brand Camp 6, hosted by University of Innsbrück in Obergurgl, Austria, March 14-16. 2024. Our ongoing work together with Joonas Rokka at Emlyon, France, will hopefully appear in a great Journal near you the future ;-). Meanwhile, consider your reactions when you see someone cool. What happens to you? And them?
Cityindex är den första heltäckande kartläggningen av omsättningsutvecklingen för de kommersiella verksamheterna i Sveriges stadskärnor. Årets rapport presenteras här av Christina Friberg, expert stadsutveckling hos Fastighetsägarna och Emma Hernell, Vice VD på HUI Research. Programmet gästas av Sofia Ulver, Konsumtionsforskare och docent vid Lunds Universitet.
Den 20 oktober handlar Kunskapsbanken On Air om levnadsmönster, sociala strukturer och behov som är under ständig förändring. I ett samtal pratar Sofia Ulver, docent i marknadsföring och forskare på konsumtionskultur och arkitekt Johan Sundberg om hur hemmet kommit att spela en extra central roll, vilken roll staden och mötet kommer spela framöver när mångas köksbord övergått från frukostflingor till kontor på kort tid. Kunskapsbanken är ett initiativ från Sparbanken Skåne och ett tillfälle att träffas digital eller fysiskt och inspireras av kloka personer. I tider av coronaviruset covid-19 ses vi enbart digitalt. Kunskapsbanken är ett sammanhang där ett ämne diskuteras utifrån två olika perspektiv. Det kan vara praktiskt och teoretiskt, lokalt och globalt eller seriöst och banalt. Mats Nilsson leder samtalet.
Corona har helt klart väckt nya perspektiv i klimatdebatten. Att vi drastiskt konsumerar annorlunda är bra för miljön men samtidigt en utmaning för företagen. Vilka nya konsumtionsvanor kommer att bestå och kan de bidra till en grönare planet? Hur kan företag rusta sig mot en ny och mer hållbar konsument? Den 26 maj klockan 12.00 deltar jag i ett panelsamtal om detta. Säkra en plats och anmäl er via denna länk: https://bit.ly/2WHEOmW
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Read more and watch a 2 minute snippet
https://www.svt.se/kultur/lite-pinsamt-att-flyga-till-new-york?
In Dagens Nyheter Kultur 20/12 2018 I write about the close to bizarre normalization of our christmas gift frenzy. Time to negotiate with our families, relatives and friends about a reformulation of how this tradition could be practiced in a sustainable way.
Read the full article
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At the Swedish liquor and wine supplier association SVL’s 20 year anniversary 14’th of November 2018, I spoke about contemporary, larger ideological movements–the neoblue, the neogreen, and the neobrown–that overlap with very specific consumption patterns in terms of for example drinking cultures. At the picture from the left; @Anna De Geer, CEO @SVL; @ÅsaBritt Hermansson, CEO @Nielsen Sverige, @KeremYazgan, director of communication and sustainability at @Axel Johnson AB; me; @George Soleas, President and CEO for the alcohol monopoly LCBO in Ontario, Canada; @Rolf Cassergren, chairman SVL; @EricaBertilsson, director of sustainability @ArvidNordquist, @KajTörök, director of information and sustainability @MAX burgers, and @SaraNorell, director of assortment and sustainability @Systembolaget. #qualityoverquantity #sustainability #craftconsumer #alcoholfree #lessalcohol #socialresponsibility #systembolaget #suschoice #susfood
In this presentation I talk to large real estate companies, investors, politicians and retailers about conflicting megatrends in society that influence the way we live, consume, produce, innovate (and vote!). I frame the most central conflicting logics as Trust Economy vs. Attention Economy.
What responsibility does a brand have in the larger society? How can brands in historically stigmatized and “problematic” industries (such as gambling) think of their own existence, and navigate in an increasingly critical but also addicted consumer society?
At this conference the 24’th of October, in Linköping, Sweden, I spoke to a broad audience ranging from the Swedish Ministry of Agriculture and University deans and professors, to farmers from all over Sweden, about the neoprene revolution and how it has influenced the way consumers in an increasing way live and breath sustainability. I also talked about the “wild turn” in food consumption and how it has created a coalescence between kitchen and nature/garden.
At Livsmedelsforum 2017 the 19’th of October in Malmö, I talked about the “Art of selling sustainable food” but more from a communication than a retail perspective. I first accounted for the latest quantitative research insights (from other researchers) regarding this topic and then talked about the main life theme (in my own research) of our time–namely what I call the neogreen revolution (which I wrote a report about for Jordbruksverket in 2012)–and how the food trends manifest this in such illustrative ways. Since 2005 I have been interested in the increased consumer interest in food, eating, and cooking–the “foodies”–and since 2012 I have engaged in more systematic research about (or among!) them. My focus has been on how the content of what gives status changes over time and who has the illocutionary and interpretive precedence to state what is “right”, “appropriate” and “what we should spend money on” in the foodie culture. Ranking institutes, restaurants, food critics and large media production companies such as Netflix, with their by now (among foodies) iconic “Chef’s Table” has immense power here. And what the chefs portrayed in these various scapes are bringing forth, inspires micro trends, but also more lasting value shifts, on the global foodie market. In an upcoming Routledge anthology on Taste I and my PhD candidate Marcus Klasson delve into these Chef’s Table themes and from this emerges postmodern heroes with renaissance visions to save the world. The art of selling sustainable food is–except from BEING sustainable–very much about understanding this symbolic world of foodies’ influencers and frame one’s communication according to its meanings.
At the bizzy wizzy AdDay, for Sweden’s various brand owners to meet and get inspired, I spoke about the interesting shift in roles where both consumers AND companies together become activists. Hence, the market increasingly becomes an arena for political positioning. Where national political parties (unfortunately) fail to influence the globalized world, consumers (unfortunately) have to lean more and more upon other actors to represent them. This is where the new branding paradigm comes in; brands and consumers in a symphonic co-play in political activism.
Malmö city has and is going through major shifts and changes, not least as we speak. The stories about Malmö are spectacularly polarised and yet co-existing. How does one make sense of this? And how is consumer culture part of these stories and the breaches that change them?
The 29’Th of October 2016 I was part of a roundtable discussion about Liquid Consumption (read late Zygmunt Bauman) together with some of the world’s leading consumer society researchers (Adam Arvidsson, Eric Arnould, Russel Belk, Jacob Östberg, Sören Askegaard, Eileen Fisher, Cornelia Otnes, Linda Price etc ) organized by Fleura Bardhi and Gianna Eckhardt. Took place at the ACR Conference in Berlin (26-30Oct) at the Maritim Hotel.
At one of the world’s most renowned conferences within sociology (the 3’d international Sociological Association Forum: “The Futures we Want: Global Sociology and the Struggles for a better world) within Jean-Pascal Daloz’z research committee on comparative sociology, I organised a session on the shrinking of the middle-classes and what consequences this has for classical theories on consumption. Took place in Vienna, Austria, 10-14 July, 2016. Very exciting papers were presented, e.g. by Professor Louis Chauvel, and the room was packed. Not only by audience but also with discussions.
| Read more: | the-isa-forum |
In this JMM published article I and Marcus Klasson examine how men configure their gendered identity in a traditionally feminine domain; the setting of the domestic kitchen. We identify how feminised masculinities are shaped into hegemonic masculinity.
Reference: Klasson, M and Sofia Ulver (2015) “Masculinising Domesticity: An Investigation of Men’s Domestic Foodwork”, Journal of Marketing Management, 31:15-16, 1652-1675
| Read more: | Tandfonline.com |
In this ethnographic consultancy project (commissioned by a large Swedish Media group) I and a team of observers explored the rituals, routines, habits and meanings related to newspaper reading. The 25 participants were all loyal and enthusiastic subscribers of the paper version of the newspaper and wrote reading-diaries for a week and gave ethnographic interviews in their homes. The results were intriguing and the paradoxical, overall insight taught us that no media can be as social as a a paper newspaper.