The Travelling Library by The Cultural University
Starting from the library - as a democratic meeting place and a space for sharing knowledge and stories - we want, through The Travelling Library, to create a space where reading becomes an active practice for a plurality of stories and a hopeful vision that the free pursuit of knowledge creates a better world.
The Travelling Library invites listening, and offers ways to unpack the present, to question, articulate, and act. Its material consists of a curated collection that can grow over time through use and engagement. The collection - comprising literature, music, and artworks—reflects a range of perspectives and approaches to how we might act in times of climate emergency, social inequality, and political polarization. It encourages sharing, engagement, and participation in worldmaking for the Earth and all its species.
The Travelling Library’s principles are grounded in simplicity, trust, and care: borrow, return, and add if you wish. From mid-April 2026, the library is hosted by Krater Collective in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and is part of Festivities under the Siege. https://krater.si/en
About
The Travelling Library is organized by The Cultural University at the University Library, Linnaeus University in Sweden. It serves as a platform for researchers, students, artists, cultural institutions, and civic organizations to collaborate and engage in meaningful encounters between art and science. We work with learning across different practices, materials, and spaces, exploring sensory experiences and knowledge through art, talks, and workshops. We also host residencies, exhibitions, and publications, as well as shared conversations over coffee.
If you want to add to The Travelling Library – send an email to: helen.hagglund@lnu.se
Literature and Media The Travelling Library
Selected - The Travelling Library
Åsa Ståhl
Åsa Ståhl, PhD is a professor in design at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg. Her research and educational work focuses on world-making and holistic transformation through participatory design and alternative socio-ecological economies. Her current and recently concluded research includes “Design after Progress: Design Histories and Futures”, “Holding Surplus House”, “Earth Logic Design”, “Foresight through the Doughnut Model” and “Un/Making Matters”.
Literature and Media The Travelling Library
Ståhl, Å., & Keune, S. (Eds.). (2025). Seasonal Designing with the Holding Surplus House. https://doi.org/10.15626/ID.2025 (Open Access)
Restrepo Giraldo, J., Ståhl, Å., & Lindström, K. (2025). Un/making what? (1st ed.). https://doi.org/10.15626/9789180824033 (Open Access)
Word for world is forest, Ursula K. Le Guin
More about Åsa Ståhl
Anna-Karin Arvidsson
Anna-Karin Arvidsson is a ceramic artist and Senior Lecturer in Design at Linnaeus University, Sweden. Her transdisciplinary practice explores materiality, ecological relations and place-based artistic research, often focusing on how environmental change and human intervention shape both landscapes and cultural narratives.
Her recent work includes the projects Gold or Green Forests, examining the decline of the elm and the spread of Canadian goldenrod, and POP Pottery, a socially engaged pop-up pottery studio centred on process, participation and relational making. Through these initiatives she investigates how material stories, ecological dynamics and craft processes can illuminate contemporary environmental challenges.
She teaches design with emphasis on material processes, artistic methodology and site-responsive practices, and her work has been exhibited in several Swedish art and design contexts.
Literature and Media The Travelling Library
Crafted porcelain cups
Arvidsson, A.-K. (2023). Gold and green forests : Crafted life stories about Canadian Goldenrod and elm trees. https://doi.org/10.7577/formakademisk.5398 (Open Access)
More about Anna-Karin Arvidsson
Brandon LaBelle
Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer, theorist, and artistic director of The Listening Biennial and Listening Academy. His work focuses on questions of agency, community, pirate culture, and poetics, which results in a range of artistic presentations and extra-institutional initiatives. His publications include Poetics of Listening (2025), Dreamtime X (2022), Acoustic Justice (2021), The Other Citizen (2020), Sonic Agency (2018), Lexicon of the Mouth (2014), Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian (2012), Acoustic Territories (2010, 2019), and Background Noise (2006, 2015). In Linnaeus Residency Programme 2025-2026.
Literature and Media The Travelling Library
The Other Citizen, Brandon LaBelle
More about Brandon LaBelle
Christina Zetterlund
Christina Zetterlund is a craft and design historian, active as an associate professor at Linnaeus University and an independent curator, engaged in writing place-based histories with diverse communities.
Among her most recent projects are (Re-)learning the Archive (Designarkivet, Nybro 2021-23), Luleå Biennial 2022 – Craft & Art (in collaboration with Onkar Kular), and During the Lunchbreak (The Glass Factory Boda, 2019) and the books Småland & Sápmi. Sápmi & Småland. Design histories from different geographies (2023, together with Anna Westman Kuhmunen).
Literature and Media The Travelling Library
Zetterlund, C. (2019). During the lunch break : Conversations on friggers and conditions of making collected by Christina Zetterlund. Retrieved from https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-90643 (Open Access)
Westman Kuhmunen, A., & Zetterlund, C. (2023). Småland & Sápmi. Sápmi & Småland. : Design histories from different geographies. Retrieved from https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-125860 (Open Access)
More about Christina Zetterlund
Chiara Lenza
Chiara Lenza, Ph.D. in Intercultural studies, is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Health and Caring Science at Linnaeus University, Sweden. She has a transdisciplinary profile developed through different kind of education (MA in international relations, Ph.D. in intercultural studies), research (Postdoc in health and caring science), and work experiences in various countries (Italy, Bolivia, Brazil, Sweden) and contexts (UN agencies, NGOs, Italian Agency for Development Cooperation, diplomatic missions, Region Kalmar, Universities). Her research and education interests focus on cultural diversity, health inequalities, indigenous knowledge, intercultural health, and intercultural competence in healthcare.
Literature and Media The Travelling Library
The systems view of life: A Unifying vision. Capra Fritjof and Luisi Pier Luigi
The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe, Jeremy Lent
More about Chiara Lenza
Napoleon Maddox
Napoleon Maddox is a writer, musician, visual artist, and educator whose work bridges historical documentation and contemporary social engagement. His practice often combines archival research, oral histories, and community-based processes to illuminate marginalized narratives and reframe historical memory through sound, text, and visual art. In Linnaeus Residency Programme 2025-2026.
Literature and Media The Travelling Library
“Things Fall Apart” book - by Chinua Achebe. Chosen for its powerful verbal imagery, and realist view of pre colonial African culture and society being plunged into the colonial era.
“Home” book - by Toni Morrison. Chosen for the way the line of narrative sculpting in this builds a sense of sweet nostalgia and the dissolves it with disappointment .. effectively it’s a literary Blues“
What is the What” book - by David Eggers & Valentino Deng
“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” book - by Maya Angelo
Music
“Things Fall Apart” album - by THE ROOTS
“Wholly Earth” album - by Abbey Lincoln, Chosen for the track “Caged Bird” which references Maya Angelo’s masterpiece
“Who Used to Dance” album - by Abbey Lincoln, Title track “Who Used to Dance” is a key song in Millie-Christine : Twice the First Time
“Things That Go Bump In the Dark”by ISWHAT?!
“It’s Me” album - by Abbey Lincoln , song “Chateau Joux”
More about Napoleon Maddox
Mathilda Tham
Mathilda Tham is Professor of Design at Linnaeus University and affiliated with Goldsmiths, University of London. Her metadesign research develops uncompromisingly systemic and holistic approaches to sustainability, including new ways to meet around the infected forest issue, rituals to integrate different generations, recipes for making homes within Earth’s limits, professional designer roles, policy and media initiatives. She is co-creator of + Change education and research environment, co-author of the Earth Logic Research Plan and co-founder of Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion. Currently she leads Earth Logic Design research project within InKuis.
Literature and Media The Travelling Library
Earth Logic Gardening (2023), Kate Fletcher and Mathilda Tham (Open Access)
Zen and the art of saving the planet, Thich Nhat Hanh
More about Mathilda Tham
Elin Gunnarsson
Elin Gunnarsson works with adult education and she is passionate about democracy, associations, and everyone's right to culture. She works at Folkuniversitetet, which is an independent study association with activities throughout Sweden. She is based in Växjö and have a broad role collaborating with both students and seniors.
Literature and Media The Travelling Library
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder.
We Should All Be Feminists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
More about Folkuniversitetet
MONO
MONO record store is a living room for music lovers and an inspiring space for ideas and dialogue in Växjö. Mono and The Cultural University run Monolog, a lecture series spanning a wide spectrum - from humanities research to art, music, and literature - inviting participants to explore, discuss, and reflect in a relaxed atmosphere. A selection of literature curated by MONO record store co-owner André Kalmendal Bruns.
Literature and Media The Travelling Library
Just kids, Patti Smith
Maja Lunde, End of the ocean
Colony, Annika Norlin
More about MONO(In Swedish)
Timo Menke
Timo Menke is an interdisciplinary artist based in Stockholm. His practice is centred around various forms of nature-cultures and their entangled histories, phenomena and agencies. MFA from Konstfack 1999, Assistant Professor in the Art Department 2004– 2014.
Literature and Media The Travelling Library
Dump Philosophy: A Phenomenology of Devastation, Michael Marder
The Chernobyl Herbarium: Fragments of an Exploded Consciousness, with artworks by Anaïs Tondeur, Michael Marder
Menke, Timo. (2025). Natureculture Preserve Marhult: Contaminated Sites as Field, Discourse and Material. PARSE Journal. https://doi.org/10.70733/fdpu31ak9b80 (Open Access)
More about Naturkulturreservat (In Swedish)
Juliana Restrepo-Giraldo
Juliana Restrepo-Giraldo, PhD (she/her), is a Native Latin American designer, researcher, and educator based in Sweden. Grounded in Sumak Kawsay (Buen Vivir) and decolonial feminist perspectives, her work explores embodied and performative ways of knowing, designing, and learning. Through experimentations that ritualize dialogue around everyday objects and themes, she cultivates spaces for reflection, vulnerability, and collective wisdom.
Literature and Media The Travelling Library
Restrepo, J. (2025). Designing timespaces for Buen Vivir at home : body-place-Earth (PhD dissertation, Malmö University Press).
https://doi.org/10.24834/isbn.9789178776214(Open Access)
Restrepo Giraldo, J. (2025). Un/making what? (1st ed.). https://doi.org/10.15626/9789180824033(Open Access)
Hospicing Modernity, by Vanessa Machado de Olivera
Ch'ixinakax utxiwa: On Decolonising Practices and Discourses by Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui
More about Juliana Restrepo-Giraldo
Helen Hägglund
Helen Hägglund is an process facilitator, art scholar and operational manager at The Cultural University at Linnaeus University. Her work is to initiate and support meaningful encounters between art and science at Linnaeus University through exhibitions, residencies, and collaborative projects. Her main interest lies in how sensous learning, creativity, and collaboration can foster both individual meaning and systemic change towards a more just and solidaric society – in harmony with the earth and all its inhabitants.
Literature and Media The Travelling Library
Momo, Michael Ende
Momo 3y +, Michael Ende
More about Helen Hägglund
Maja Frögård
Maja Frögård is currently a PostDoc at Linnaeus University with a PhD in Art, Technology, and Design from KTH in collaboration with Konstfack, Sweden. Though her research she has worked with co-design to address sustainability challenges in municipalities, user-centered design to improve accessibility in public transport and is currently working with exploring conditions and values of Earth logic design practices.
Literature and Media The Travelling Library
A field guide to getting lost, Rebecca Solnit
Frögård, M. (2021). Negotiating Tensions : Designers’ responsibilities in democratic entanglements (PhD dissertation, KTH Royal Institute of Technology). Retrieved from https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-300967(Open Access)
More about Maja Frögård
Liv Nilsson Stutz
Liv Nilsson Stutz is professor of Arcaheology at Linnaeus University, and the Director for LNUC Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies. Her work is focused on the human body, death, and ritual practice, with a commitment to engage lived human experience across time and cultures.
Literature and Media The Travelling Library
You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays, Zora Neale Hurston
Kindred, Octavia Butler
Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett.
More about Liv Nilsson Stutz
Kerstin Brodén
Kerstin Brodén is the general editor at Linnaeus University Press and Project Manager for the Erasmus+ project Rock Your Research. Together with three colleagues Kerstin started LinnéReads: literary book club for students. Willful Disregard, was our first novel. Lena Andersson is also an honorary doctorate at Linnaeus University.
Literature and Media The Travelling Library
Willful Disregard, Lena Andersson
More about Kerstin Brodén
Helene Larsson Pousette
Helene Larsson Pousette (she/her) is a diplomat, curator, senior facilitator, writer, and the former Counsellor for Cultural Affairs at the Embassy of Sweden in Washington, DC (USA) and at the Embassy of Sweden in Serbia. Initiator of Creative Mentorship Serbia and WE HEAR YOU—A CLIMATE ARCHIVE. Co-founder of the Stockholm Museum of Women’s History. Author of ARKIVISM and former member of the Swedish National Heritage Board, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, and the Swedish Arts Grants Committee. In Linnaeus Residency Programme with the project UNGOVERNABLE 2025-2027.
Literature and Media The Travelling Library
Life in every Breath, Fatima Bremmer
Survival is a promise, Alexis Pauline Gumbs
More about Ungovernable