Research trip to the USA

In early September 2022, I journeyed to Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota to track sources that I had been looking for since the early stages of my PhD project.

En park i Boston med turgåere — Foto fra Boston

Maybe it sounds strange, that a study concerning the Norwegian Lutheran Mission’s (NLM) educational work in China would lead me to the Midwest. The brief explanation for this is that Norwegians immigrated to the Midwest and then further took up missionary work in China. Some of the Norwegian-American missionaries became NLM’s closest companions in Central China. I hoped to find sources about the cooperation between the Norwegian American missionaries and the NLM at Luther Seminary. To my surprise, there was a huge collection of Norwegian written material present, and I found a lot of relevant sources.With the help of the librarians at Luther Seminary I was also able to track sources at different locations in Minnesota and I ended up visiting five other colleges to detect additional sources.

Time was short and weeks flew away, and at the end of my stay in Minnesota I was left with a feeling of gratitude for discovering a source material I did not know existed and for meeting experts on topics in my field of study.

My next stop was Boston. Here, I would also be reunited with my family. My first stop in Boston was Harvard Divinity School. It was not the search for Norwegian American missionaries that led me to Boston, but the search for sources relating to protestant educational work in China. I was curious about how Norwegian Mission schools and other protestant schools cooperated. In Boston, I also connected with Professor Ellen Widmer from Wellesley College, who had agreed to serve as my host supervisor during my stay. As in St. Paul, it did not take long before I realised that I needed to visit additional archives. Therefore, I journey both to Yale in New Haven, and to Union Seminary in New York to detect more sources

It might seem as I spent my time alone digging through archive material for two months (which is not wrong), but I also got the opportunity to meet scholars at each location I visited. The combination of searching through sources and conversing with archivists and scholars was valuable, and it kept leading me to new archives and to new scholars.

I would like to thank ATTR-research school and Birkeland Legacy for financial funding this trip and making this research stay into a reality. There are also several others that I want to thank, such as the international coordinators, scholars, and the librarians at Luther Seminary. In addition, Ellen Widmer,

together with the archivists at Harvard Divinity school, Yale Divinity School, and Burke Library. I am very grateful for your guidance and assistance during my stay.

Best regards Marte Nesse Lægreid

Tiden fløy av sted og det nærmet seg avreise til neste destinasjon, som var Boston. Her skulle jeg også bli gjenforent med familien min.

Mitt første stopp i Boston var Harvard Divinity School. Det var ikke informasjon om norskamerikanske misjonærer som førte meg til Boston, men kilder knyttet til protestantisk pedagogisk arbeid i Kina. Jeg var nysgjerrig på hvordan norske misjonsskoler og andre protestantiske skoler samarbeidet. I Boston fikk jeg også kontakt med professor Ellen Widmer fra Wellesley College, som hadde sagt ja til å være min vertskapsveileder under oppholdet mitt. Som i St. Paul, tok det ikke lang tid før jeg skjønte at jeg trengte å besøke flere arkiver. Derfor dro jeg både til Yale i New Haven og til Union Seminary i New York hvor jeg fant flere kilder.

Det kan kanskje virke som om jeg brukte tiden min alene på å grave gjennom arkivmateriale i to måneder (som stemmer til en viss grad), men jeg fikk også muligheten til å møte forskere på hvert sted jeg var. Kombinasjonen av å søke gjennom kilder, og ha samtaler med arkivarer og forskere var verdifull.

Jeg vil takke ATTR-forskerskolen og Birkelands legat for den økonomiske finansieringen av turen, som gjorde dette forskningsoppholdet mulig. Det er også flere andre jeg vil takke. Jeg må takke de internasjonale koordinatorene, forskerne og bibliotekarene ved Luther Seminary. I tillegg vil jeg takke Ellen Widmer, og arkivarene ved Harvard Divinity School, Yale Divinity School og Burke Library. Jeg er veldig takknemlig for veiledning og hjelp under oppholdet.

Vennlig hilsen Marte Nesse Lægreid

Published by Marte Lægreid Nesse, Maria Tendenes. Date: 19. January 2023.