The Dialogue Project

The International Dialogue Project was initiated in 1978 by the geographers Anne Buttimer and Torsten Hägerstrand to explore alternative means to communicate across disciplines and diverse fields of interest. They argued that the increasing specialization and fragmentation of knowledge posed an ever-growing barrier to appropriately respond to societal challenges.

It has always been my ambition to overcome the barriers between the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences”, Torsten Hägerstrand wrote.

Employing videotaped interviews and written commentaries by review groups, the pair devised a unique method of asynchronous dialogue, focusing on how the inner world of an individual – the values and meaning shaping a person’s intellectual life – related to the outer world of activities and work the person was known for.

This digital collection is comprised of two types of material: the filmed interviews produced at Lund University from 1978 to 2010, and documents from Torsten Hägerstrand’s archive specifically dedicated to the International Dialogue Project. In a similar way, University College Dublin is currently making material from the Dialogue Project held in Anne Buttimer’s personal archive accessible.

• Filmed interviews
• Conceptual sketches
• Technology
• Invitations
• Tests and reactions
• Unrealized plans
• Other notes
• Transcripts

Torsten Hägerstrand’s archive was donated to Lund University Library in batches from 2005 to 2023, but organized and catalogued first in 2024-2025. The work was funded by the Thora Ohlsson Foundation and enables us to better understand the inception and development of the International Dialogue Project, and the legacy of Buttimer and Hägerstrand.

Three different versions of the Dialogue Project would emerge from Buttimer’s and Hägerstrand’s initiative. The first and most well-known phase was directed by Buttimer and Hägerstrand in Lund from 1978 to 1988, resulting in 137 interviews with senior and retired geographers, planners and other professionals.

When Buttimer departed from Lund University in 1988, responsibility for the initiative was ceded to Margareth Wijk, a French linguist at Lund University, who from 1989 to 2010 undertook a second phase of the Dialogue Project. This resulted in an additional 45 interviews with respected scientists and cultural figures.

A third and often overlooked version of the Project originated from Hägerstrand’s attempt in 1977 to explore ways to involve artistic researchers linked to SALFO (Samarbetskommittén för Långsiktsmotiverad Forskning) in a dialogical exchange. This would later evolve through the aegis of Bo Göranzon into the creation of “Dialogue Seminars” (Dialogseminarier) and a review, Dialoger, co-produced through the Royal Institute of Technology and the Royal Dramatic Theatre.