The five national minorities in Sweden – Sámi and Roma people, Jews, Sweden-Finns and Tornedalian Finns – have had an established status since 2000 after Sweden ratified the European charter for minority languages. However, these minorities have long been invisible in academic contexts and the use of their languages as a study language has been non-existent. We want to change that! We intend to establish a campaign for university and high school students from the national minorities to encourage them to write their final theses and student essays on topical national minority issues.

We see student work as a great forum for producing new knowledge about issues that are discussed in minority politics and media, such as language revitalisation, the everyday life and identities of young people, bilingualism, and discrimination. We will create an online forum where we will collect theses from 2000 to 2023 and interview their authors to showcase inspiring examples for aspiring and future students. Our intention is to encourage young people to study and produce knowledge about issues that are relevant for their own minority groups.

We will specifically focus on Sweden-Finns and Tornedalian Finns who together constitute the largest national minority group, but we will also give a voice to other national-minority students.