The Icelandic Love Research Association
My answer to the question „What is being done to us?“ as women in the free and equal, yet still patriarchial Western society is that men exploit a certain power resource in women, mainly the power of love. This is basically what the contemporary, Western sex-struggle is about.
– Dr. Anna Guðrún Jónasdóttir
About the Association
The Icelandic Love Research Association is made up of female scholars from different schools and faculties within the University of Iceland. The idea for the association came when Anna Guðrún Jónasdóttir, the first Icelandic doctor of love research, was granted an honorary doctorate at the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Iceland.
Founding Members of the Association
Chairwoman
Berglind Rós Magnúsdóttir
Dr. Berglind Rós Magnúsdóttir is a Professor at the School of Education, University of Iceland. In her research, she has explored the impact of parental care when making decisions and working on their children’s schooling. Her newest research project is on romantic love and relationships in Icelandic urban society.
Choice in a capitalist society has long been of interest to her since exploring parental choices and commitments regarding their children’s education and on the youth choices of upper-secondary schools. In the ongoing love research, the focus is on choices that are made when it comes to love. These are all decisions that people feel matter greatly in their lives but have not been covered in Icelandic academia.
Member
Brynhildur Björnsdóttir
Brynhildur Björnsdóttir is a singer, actress, journalist and love researcher. She finished her MA degree in Cultural Studies from The University of Iceland in 2020.
Her thesis is called Power of love and there she discusses the ideal of romantic love in a cultural context based on the theories of Anna Guðrún Jónasdóttir and Eva Illouz.
Brynhildur did several radio presentations based on her love research at Icelandic national Radio in the spring of 2017 and a recital of song and words was premiered at Reykjavik Fringe Festival in 2021. Brynhildur is currently working on love research with Prof. Berglind Rós Magnúsdóttir.
Member
Silja Bára Ómarsdóttir
Dr. Silja Bára Ómarsdóttir is a Professor in International Affairs at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Iceland. Her main areas of expertise are feminist international relations, Icelandic foreign and security policies, and reproductive rights.
In her ongoing research on the liberalization of abortion access within the framework of a global backlash, she explores the framing of women in conservative discourses as unwilling to love and unlovable due to their decisions not to have children.
Member
Gyða Margrét Pétursdóttir
Dr. Gyða Margrét Pétursdóttir is a Professor in Gender Studies at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Iceland. Her main areas of expertise are femininities, masculinities, gender relations, gender-based violence, work cultures, higher education, family responsibility, and motherhood.
In her ongoing research on motherhood, with Ph.D. student Margaret Anne Johnson, she focuses on people who have mothered but regret their decision to do so despite loving the children.
Member
Annadís Greta Rúdólfsdóttir
Dr. Annadís Greta Rúdólfsdóttir is an Associate Professor in Research Methods at the Faculty of Education, University of Iceland. Her main areas of expertise are qualitative research methods and gender.
She is interested in affective discursive practices especially in relation to young femininities and masculinities and motherhood. She aims to explore how love figures in discourses of femininities and masculinities and how feeling rules that draw on love constitute practices of motherhood.
Member
Hanna Ólafsdóttir
Members of the Association
Research Project
A research project, titled Romantic Love and Relationships in Icelandic Post Modernity, is being conducted at the present by Berglind Rós Magnúsdóttir professor at the University of Iceland.
MA Thesis by Brynhildur Björnsdóttir: Abstract
Romantic love is one of the best things in life, on that both Coca Cola and Disney agree. This thesis discusses the idea of romantic love as it manifests itself in modern western culture, both the effect it has on society, economy and popular culture and also how it influences power imbalance and gender inequality. It raises the question whether the development of the idea of romantic love in Western culture in the twentieth century is connected to women’s growing social and political power.
This question is answered in this source essay, where extensive theoretical sources and examples of popular culture from the last century and this one are intertwined. The main emphasis is on the theories of Anna Guðrún Jónasdóttir, a political scientist and gender studies academic, about love power and the economics of love and the theories of sociologist Eva Illouz, that has researched love as a factor in economy and also people’s expectations and experience of love and relationships in general. Their theories are linked together by discussing the discourse of popular culture as it is displayed in music, film, advertisements and children’s material from the early twentieth century until today.
In the thesis I discuss theories about the biological purpose of romantic love, how capitalism has utilized the idea of it to sell both merchandise and ideas, how love and relationship are subject to the structures of the market and women’s love power as a basic drive force for the personal in society. A few well known love stories from popular culture are discussed using the methods of discourse and thus light is shed on how women are taught from a very early age to give away their love power by conditioning them to desire and believe in romantic love.
A combination of those stories and theory leads to the conclusion that the idea of romantic love is a societal myth with complex roots that today is utilized to get independent women to choose voluntarily to continue their unpaid emotional labour, for men and society as a whole.
