Dr. Jakob Kihlberg

Biography

Jakob Kihlberg is a researcher at Uppsala University, focusing on political culture, media history, and visual culture of the nineteenth century. His current research project investigates the Swedish illustrated press and its representation of foreign political occurrences and historical events during the mid-nineteenth century. Kihlberg's dissertation, titled 'Boundless Claims: Public Meetings and the Making of the International' (2018), examines how international phenomena took shape in the middle of the nineteenth century through case studies of early international congresses. This research emphasizes the emerging mediated audiences in various countries. His finished projects include 'Making European People Visible' and 'Birth of the Illustrated News', which explores transnational political subjectivity in the 1840s and how people began to identify as part of 'the people', influencing their legitimate say in political matters. Furthermore, Kihlberg analyzes the historical roots of these ideas back to the constitutional developments in modern democratic societies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His research has contributed new perspectives on how illustrated news magazines in established European countries during the 1840s played a role in imagining collective interests and public gatherings, ultimately influencing the transnational participation of European individuals.

Research Interests