University of Gothenburg
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Thomas Bossius

Senior Lecturer

Aesthetics
Unit
Telephone
+46 31-786 54 91
Mail
thomas.bossius@kultur.gu.se
Visiting address
Renströmsgatan 6
41255 Göteborg
Room number
E243
Postal address
Box 200
405 30 Göteborg

About Thomas Bossius

General

Head of the Department of Cultural Sciences, Associate Professor in Musicology, Assistant Professor in Cultural Studies.

Current Research

See https://www.gu.se/en/research/classical-music-for-a-mediatized-world-vi…

Finished projects

The Future in the Rear-View Mirror: Black Metal and Trance Culture: Youth, Music and Religion in a Late Modern World My main field of research is the living conditions of the contemporary individual, with focus on the use and function of music and religion in people’s everyday life. In my Ph.D. dissertation, which I finished in 2003, I discuss the subcultures of Black Metal and Psychedelic Trance Music. The title of the dissertation is The Future in the Rear-View Mirror: Black Metal and Trance Culture: Youth, Music and Religion in a Late Modern World (Swedish title: Med framtiden i backspegeln: Black metal- och transkulturen: Musik, ungdomar och religion i en senmodern värld). The dissertation was published by Daidalos in 2003.

Music Festivals and Drugs After receiving my Ph.D., I took part in a project financed by Mobilisation Against Narcotics, which was part of a campaign run by the Swedish government. The title of our project was Att droga ibland (the title is hard to translate, but roughly it means ”Taking drugs occasionally”), and consisted of four parts. I was responsible for one of these, “Music Festivals and Drugs”, and took part in a second one called “Swedish Club Culture and Drugs”.

Christian Youth Culture and Christian Popular Music in Sweden Together with Andreas Häger at Åbo Akademi University, Finland, I developed the project Christian Youth Culture and Christian Popular Music in Sweden. With funding from Frikyrkliga forskningsrådet (The Free Church Research Council) we conducted a pilot study and collected a rich material, which resulted in a number of articles (see the publication list). We are working on the compilation of these articles into a book, which will be complemented with new articles and an introductory chapter. No deadline is set for this publication.

Music in People’s Lives In 2006-2011 I worked together with fellow musicologist Lars Lilliestam with the study Music in People’s Lives (Swedish: Musik i människors liv), a research project focusing on the everyday use of music, which asked questions about the uses and functions of music in people’s everyday life. The final report, titled Musiken och jag (Eng.: The Music and I) was published by Bo Ejeby Förlag in 2011.

Religion and Popular Music in Europe Religion and Popular Music in Europe: New Expressions of Sacred and Secular Identity (2011) is an anthology published by I.B. Tauris. The book is the result of cooperation between eight researchers from Sweden, Finland, Norway, England and France, and presents a number of examples of the changed location and function of religion in contemporary, modern European society. I, Andreas Häger and Keith Kahn-Harris edited the book.

Education

I have mainly taught in the disciplines Cultural Studies and Children’s and Youth Culture. I have also been a teacher at the Bachelor Programme Culture.

In January 2012 I was appointed Head of Department for Cultural Sciences, and I presently have no teaching assignments.