Women’s Mobility and Migration Patterns in the Baltic Sea Region, 1360-1560


Field: History, Gender Studies
Project leader: Lovisa Olsson
Starting year: 2025
Project type: Postdoctoral project
Total funding: SEK 2,961,000

This project aims to investigate women’s mobility and migration in the towns of the Baltic Rim during the late medieval and early modern period. Whilst previous research describes the towns of the Baltic Rim as intricately connected through trade and cultural exchange, mobility and migration in this period is depicted as a nearly exclusively male phenomenon. By bridging the research fields on mobility and women’s position this project would contribute to our understanding of the connections, structures and experiences that shaped the culture of the Baltic region. A theoretical framework on spatiality drawing on Doreen Massey’s views on the construction and gendering of social space would enable this study to challenge the depiction that women were not part of the migration and mobility in the region. The study would contribute with a pioneering effort to uncover sources and examples of female mobility and migration, and would analyze the results through this framework by comparing examples of lived female mobility in the records of the town administrations with the previous depictions of norms and legislation for mobility. Not only would this study contribute scientifically to the understanding of women’s role connections around the Baltic Sea, but it would hold societal relevance with regards to the broad popular interest for the history of mobility in this region, as well as giving voice to women’s contribution in shaping the cultural heritage of the Baltic Sea region.