The Faculty of Theology

Life stories often include depictions of setbacks, dangers and struggles. These stories are also about overcoming these dangers, about heroism and change – sometimes alone and sometimes with the guidance of a magical power. Such stories encapsulate a fundamental truth about our human nature – that resilience grows out of crises and everyday experiences.

In many international projects, I have focused on the difficult experiences that migrant refugees talk about, both before and after fleeing to another country. In this context, I have also studied the methods that migrants use for overcoming these experiences, their expressions of hope, and their self-realisation. For many of these individuals, existential questions are about the ultimate questions of death, freedom, isolation and meaning, but also about the small situations that make up everyday life experiences – a friend, a child, a prayer, being treated in a friendly way.

Resilience in the lives of migrants and their capacity to overcome their negative experiences can teach us something about more socially sustainable societies for the future.

My research area is Early Judaism and the New Testament. I am particularly interested in various Jewish movements, the fellowship meal, the interpretation of law, the position of women, notions of angels and demons, hygiene practices and apocalyptic visions of the future. In recent years, I have had a particular focus on Jesus the historical person and his movement. In my research, I work with an extensive body of material comprising Hebrew and Greek texts – primarily the Dead Sea Scrolls, Pseudepigrapha (non-biblical Jewish writings), and the gospels of the New Testament.

I am part of a research group of just over twenty people in the research programme “At the End of the World: A Transdisciplinary Approach to the Apocalyptic Imaginary in the Past and Present” funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (RJ). In this context, I study Jesus’s message of the coming of the Kingdom of God, which would involve a radical change and would take place during his lifetime.