Associate Professor
Department of History, Uppsala University, Sweden
Contact
Helene.loow@hist.uu.se
Webpage
Heléne Lööw – Uppsala University, Sweden (uu.se)
Bio
Heléne Lööw is Associate Professor at the Department of History, Uppsala University. Her dissertation from 1990 on the Swedish national socialist movements is still the standard work in this field. Lööw has held positions as researcher at the universities of Gothenburg and Stockholm, and in the Swedish National Research Council for Crime Prevention (BRÅ). From 2000 to 2001, she worked at the Prime Minister’s office in the “Stockholm International Forum: combating intolerance”, resulting in the establishment of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and the government agency Living History Forum, the latter of which she was director from 2003 to 2006. She took part in establishing the Centre for Police Research (CPR) at Uppsala University, which she headed from 2010 to 2013. Lööw was responsible for the research project “Good practice for dialogue and communication as strategic principles for policing political manifestations in Europe” (GODIAC), financed by the Prevention of and Fight against Crime Programme of the European Commission-Directorate-General Home Affairs and headed by the Swedish National Police board. Lööw’s research covers a broad range of topics: fascism/national socialism until today, political violence, terrorism and hate crime (including the organisation and tactics of law enforcement), racism/white supremacy, and crime prevention/counterterrorism. She has published a considerable number of monographs, articles, volumes, research reports and special issues on these topics. Lööw has served on several state commissions and inquiries on hate crime, racism, discrimination, restitution issues regarding the Second World War, and on combating extremism. From 1998 to 1999, she was the Swedish representative in the European Commission against Racism and Crime, and from 2000 to 2004 in the European Union Military Committee and a member of its executive board. Lööw has won several awards for her research, among them the Immigrant-institutets forskarpris (1992), Torgny Segerstedt pris (1995), Artister mot nazisters stipendium (2002), Aaron Isaac -priset (2002), Svenska magen David Adom – Årets livräddare (2006), Föreningen Förintelsens Överlevande i Sveriges Hedersdiplom (2014), Stora historiepriset (2015), Martin H:son Holmdal stipendium (2015), Elin Vägner-sällskapet årets Väckarklocka (2017), and Lotten von Kraemers pris (2021). She is heading the NORFAS research project Inception: The Birth of Nordic Fascism, and the research consortium SWEFAS, initiated by NORFAS.
Research interests
- Fascism
- Terrorism and extremism
- Counter measures and prevention
- Hate crime
- Antisemitism