Partners

At the End of the World is housed at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, a department within Lund University's Joint Faculties of the Humanities and Theology.

Experimenting with Traditions: The Life and Afterlife of 20th Century Jewish Intellectual Culture in the Baltic Sea Region (2024–2028) is a Grand Project based at Södertörn University and funded by the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies. The project explores the remarkable philosophical, theological, and literary developments that took place within the Jewish intellectual culture of the Baltic Sea region in the first half of the 20th century. It examines how the encounter between Rabbinic-Hassidic thought and German Enlightenment philosophy gave rise to unique intellectual experiments, by combining religious and philosophical traditions into new forms of thought and expression, what one of its leading representatives, Franz Rosenzweig in 1926 called a “new thinking.” The aim of the project is to trace, describe, connect, and explain these accomplishments, as they arise from the tension between margin and centre, minority and majority, national belonging and diaspora. Drawing from disciplines such as Philosophy, The Study of Religions, Theology, Jewish Studies, Narrative Theory, Literature, and Memory Studies, an international research team consisting of senior researchers and doctoral candidates applies a comprehensive theoretical and methodological approach to the study of Central and Eastern European Jewish intellectual traditions, including their afterlife in a post-Holocaust.

Soundscapes of Warning (2024–2026): The aim of this project is to trace the intellectual, political, material, and cultural development trajectories of the Swedish public warning system VMA (Viktigt meddelande till allmänheten / Important Public Announcement) in order to make a substantial and historically informed research contribution to a clear articulation and communication of policy in the area of sonic public warnings in crisis and war. Members from At the End of the World involved with Soundscapes of Warning include Marie Cronqvist who work with their colleagues Iben Bjørnsson, Rosanna Farbøl, Elin Franzén, and Emil Stjernholm. The project is housed at Linköping University and is funded by the Swedish Research Council.

Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS): The Käte Hamburger Center for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies at Heidelberg University focuses on the question of how catastrophes and end-time scenarios affect societies, individuals and environments. The aim is to describe past and present system upheavals and collapses in a differentiated way on the basis of a transdisciplinary research approach and to distinguish between them. The reactions to apocalyptic scenarios as well as future designs for the time after the catastrophe are also to be understood, analysed and questioned against the background of their respective historical and cultural frameworks.

At the End of the World is engaged in a formal collaboration with Riksteatern/Länk (2025–2028) under the title From Chaos to Creativity – Young People Explore the Apocalypse on Stage. 

This joint initiative engages young people across Sweden to explore and showcase apocalyptic imaginaries through the performing arts. In dialogue with the researchers of At the End of the World, playwrights are developing five new plays to be made available through youth theatre groups throughout the country. The collaboration is supported by a research communication grant of nearly SEK 2,000,000 from Formas, awarded to Johannes Stripple. The Crafoord Foundation supports the collaboration with a further research grant of SEK 300,000, and an additional SEK 400,000 from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond/The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (RJ). The project is managed jointly by Stripple and Natalie Bloch.