Mikaela Platander is in her last semester of the MA in European intellectual history and culture at the University of Oslo, and is currently writing her thesis on how feelings are expressed and produced in relation to textiles. She is also enrolled in courses on Medieval Latin and Paleography under the aegis of The Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Etudes Médiévales (FIDEM) that is hosted by the Norwegian Institute this semester.
Platanders research combines perspectives from the history of emotion, monastic history, and dress history in order to analyse the role of textiles in Birgitta of Sweden’s thinking. In her monastic rule, Regula Salvatoris, textiles are instilled with emotional valence (a concept used by Margrit Pernau) through practices of embroidering and dressing. Her research analyses how Birgitta employed textiles to create an emotional community of women in her monastic order.