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The Never Ending Journey

Those of you who have followed ‘Lost in a Cup’ from the early days in 2013, when it was a blog of an exchange student fascinated by the weird and beautiful Sweden – you have seen a lot of changes taking place on this platform.

Alex Maxia in Rackabergsgatan, Uppsala (2013) – Photo by Krissy Einsfield

2016: When I returned to Sweden to start my Master’s in Cultural Anthropology at Uppsala University, I decided to re-activate it.

2017 I started using Lost in a Cup to sell espresso coffee roasted in my hometown in Sardinia and combine it with an idea of renewing the way we experience cafes.

In early 2020 me and a couple of friends fine tuned the concept to study a format for events in cafes that had the goal to bring more customers to the venues we collaborated with and at the same time stimulate interesting conversations amongst participants, inspired by academic research. We called these events ‘cultural café’, recalling the European coffee-drinking tradition established in the 1600’s.

The plan was to hold physical events in cafés in Uppsala and Stockholm but come March, covid-19 brought us to using Zoom. The experience was both challenging and rewarding as we managed to connect people around a virtual coffee table even from different parts of the world.

In all these years, the one red-line that connects Lost in a Cup’s activity is the mission behind all the work I did: to communicate effectively to a broad and diverse audience whilst stimulating thought-provoking and conversation-starting content.

2021: This year I achieved my childhood dream, to work as a journalist. In January I joined Sveriges Radio in Stockholm to work P3 Dokumentär, a very popular radio-documentary programme. I was there at Swedish public service radio for little over 6 months. In summer, I started working as a freelancer reporting from Oslo and Utøya for BBC World Service radio and Radio1 Rai, Italian public service.

Creating content for Lost in a Cup was put ‘på is’ (on ice), as we would say in Sweden but work continued, behind the scenes.

A new idea was developed – 3UPP Media. The mission is ‘to bridge the gap between academic research and society, by helping researchers and media producers connect.’ This idea was accepted on the incubator programme at Uppsala Innovation Centre and thanks to their support was further developed.

Gothenburg skyline. Cred. Per Pixel Petersson/imagebank.sweden.se

September 2021: This month I moved out of Uppsala, after living there for 5 years and started studying a masters’ in ‘investigative journalism’ at Gothenburg University. Having been to visit Gothenburg many times, I fell in love with the city after the first visit so am extremely happy to be here and hope to be able to somewhat develop Lost in a Cup further in future.

How? In what way? Those are two very good questions. Only time will tell!

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Festive-themed Cultural Café on Sunday 20th December!

On Sunday the 20th of December it is time for the last digital Cultural Café event of the year! As the holidays are just around the corner we thought of making it a bit festive talking about the tradition of Christmas, Saint Lucy (Sankta Lucia), Saint Nicholas and more.

How do you celebrate Christmas? Are traditions important for you and your close ones or not that much? Is there something stronger and deeper in traditions that goes beyond the religious calendar? These questions and more will feature in our usual format, this time pushed to a bit of a later time on a Sunday based on our previous feedback.

Joining Alex, founder of Lost in a Cup, in hosting the event is Alexandra Coutinho PhD, best known as Alex or here on Lost in a Cup as ‘Dr Alex’. She has been working in the background over the past months and is going to be co-chairing the event from Uppsala.

To make sure you save yourself a spot go to the form and sign up. It’s the season to be jolly, bring friends, family and colleagues – the more the merrier!

Never been to a Cultural Café event before?

Here you find all the information on what to expect!!

Questions? Don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Event will be held on Zoom, so make sure you bring your own tea, coffee, biscuits, mulled wine or whatever tickles your fancy.

Event’s hashtags: #EspressøYourself #TraditionValues

HoHoHo!

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Cultural Café #4: The evolution of warfare – what will it look like? in the future?

Lost in a Cup’s cultural café will talk about warfare, surveillance and how the use of developing technology will effect future conflicts – for better or for worse.

For the occasion we are happy to announce that we are partnering up with Pax et Bellum, a student society which focuses on exploring themes relevant to the study field of ‘peace and conflicts’.

Important to remember that this is a meeting place for people from all walks of life and from different countries so there is no pre-required knowledge needed on the topic as the event is structured in a way to enable conversations based on the material we provide and common knowledge.

Chairing the digital event this time will be Alexander Maxia, founder of Lost in a Cup and Maël Hanon, vice-president of Pax et Bellum.

This event’s Academic speakers:

Pere Brunet

Professor in Software and VR at the Technical University of Catalonia  and researcher at the Delas Center for Peace Studies. His research interests lie in the social implications of science and engineering and on a science-inspired analysis of militarism and terrorism.

Kristiaan Pelckman

Associate Professor at the department of Information Technology, division of Systems and Controls at Uppsala University, His research touches on machine learning, automatic control and different applications of either.

> Don’t forget to save yourself a spot by signing up to the event here!

Never been to a Cultural Café event before?

Here you find all the information on what to expect!!

Questions? Don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Event will be held on Zoom, so make sure you bring your own tea, coffee, biscuits or whatever you fancy.

Event’s hashtags: #EspressøYourself #TechWar

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Cultural Café #3: Can We Recycle Our Way To Sustainability?

October’s cultural café will focus on environment and dig into the big questions around aspiring to live in a sustainable way but at the same time continuing to live the lifestyle we got used to.

Recycling efforts have increased massively, especially in Europe, but is that actually the full answer to our problem?

To explore this thematic we have partnered up with environmental think tank Ecollective who has helped us in researching the topic and will also co-host the event with us. Joining Alex as event coordinator is the CEO of Ecolective, Nils Weber.

As always, there will be plenty to discuss and thanks to the internet we will have the opportunity of hosting and connecting people from different parts of the world to take part in the conversation.

Still not sure what our events are about? Check out the info on our digital cultural cafés.

The event will be held on Zoom and link will be provided by email the day before the event.

In order to save yourself a spot please sign up via our form that you find here.

WHEN: Tuesday 6th October @ 19:00 Stockholm CET time / 18:00 London BST

WHERE: Wherever you are – online event via Zoom. Click on this link a few minutes before the event.

PASSWORD: espresso

HASHTAG: #RethinkRecycling

Join our events on our social media channels and invite friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances and your local bus driver!

Facebook

LinkedIn

Any questions, get in touch: info@lostinacup.com

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Gang Culture

Mats Utas is a professor in Anthropology and head of the department of Anthropology and Ethnology at Uppsala University. His research mainly focused on conflict and post conflict situations based on extensive fieldwork in West Africa, mainly Liberia and Sierra Leon.

In this video he contributes with his analysis on gang culture based on post-conflict Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leon and draws some observations on organisational structures and contexts in which criminal groups emerge.

Are these patterns that dissimilar from those we see around gangs in Europe and North America?

Filming and editing by Lost in a Cup’s video director Carl Broberg (2020).

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Cultural Café at Kulturnatten 2020!

Uppsala is our home city and every year the municipality organises Kulturnatten, an event which normally gathers thousands of people who visit Uppsala from all over Sweden. This year, due to covid-19 it is going to be 100% digital which, on the bright side, means that people from all over the world can take part in the celebrations.

We are proud to announce that our digital ‘Cultural Café’ event is going to be a part of this year’s schedule. The event will be held in English.

WHEN: 12th of September 2020 at 19:00 (Swedish time – CET)

WHERE: on Zoom!

HOW: Simply sing-up via our form here.

THEME: ‘Are Historical Sins Ever to Be Forgiven?‘

For more information about all the other events happening on the day as part of Uppsala’s Kulturnatten check out the programme on their website.

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September 2nd – Cultural Café #2: Should I report this?

After a Summer break and loads of iced coffees in the sun, Lost in a Cup is back in town and so are the Cultural Cafés!

Following the success of our first digital event in July, we decided to keep it going and hold more events in the coming months with different themes and topics to focus on to get the debates going and bring people together in our borderless cultural cafe.

The theme this time is going to allow us to debate a situation of doubt we have all experienced at some point or other in our lives. When we see someone breaking the law should we: report it, try to sort it out ourselves or just walk past and totally ignore it?

Whether it directly affects you or it doesn’t, should you report what you’ve witnessed? To what extent should we tolerate wrong doings? Or take our own direct action? When instead should we delegate it to the authorities?

We look forward to gather together once again, with people from different countries and backgrounds, to discuss the topic and challenge our thoughts with inspiration from academic research. Prepare your coffee-cup and get ready for the second Cultural Café!

Still not sure what our Cultural Café events are all about?! Click here and find out!

Cultural Café #2: Should I report this?

WHEN? 2nd September 2020

WHERE? Online! Via the Zoom platform (meeting link available 48 hours before)

TIME? 19:00 – 20:30 Stockholm & Central European Time

LANGUAGE? English

HOW? Sign up via the form. Click here (it will open in a new tab).

HASHTAGS: #ShouldIReport #EspressøYourself

Don’t forget to tell friends who could be interested, as we are holding the event digitally we don’t have to worry about running out of chairs ! > Click here to invite your friends to the Facebook event

Find out about all the upcoming Cultural Cafe events in the following months.

Thoughts? Questions? Comments? Don’t hesitate to get in touch!

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Cultural Café Events in 2020: Save the Dates!

The ‘Cultural Cafe‘ is Lost in a Cup’s signature event and we would love it if you came!

That’s why we are publishing all the dates of the upcoming digital events now – for the rest of 2020, so you can write it down in your diary and join us.

The themes of the events will be announced on our website and social media channels a few weeks before the events.

The time of the events remains the same:

20:00 Central European Time (Stockholm, Bruxelles, Paris, Madrid, Rome)

Other time zone:

Europe: 19:00 GMT, London, Lisbon / 21:00 – Helsinki, Athens, Moscow

Americas: 14:00 New York, East Coast / 11:00 Los Angeles, West Coast

Asia: 22:30 Tehran / 00:30 (+1) New Delhi

Events will take place digitally via Zoom so in order to take place you need to reserve a spot via the specific sign-up forms:

Sign up to the Cultural Café of the 13th of December here.

If you have any questions just get in touch!

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Cultural Café #1: Are historical ‘sins’ ever to be forgiven?

History teaches us of the many great things mankind has achieved but can also show us the big mistakes made over and over again in time.

Depending on how you were taught it in school you most likely either love it or hate it and that has a lot to do with how it was presented and what way you engage with the past. This video by ‘The School of Life‘ gives a good intro to ‘History’ as a subject and the problems in the way it is taught.

Through time many things change including consensus over certain topics and behaviours which brought us to discussing if moral behaviours committed by people in the past should be judged by today’s standards. We listened to some extracts of BBC Radio 4’s programme ‘The Philosopher’s Arms’, originally aired in 2013 and available online via BBC Sound.

During the discussions, the participants shared a lot of interesting suggestions on things to read about connected to the topic. We listed some of them here:

Books:

  • “Enlightenment Now” by Steven Pinker
  • “Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral.” by Bertolt Brecht
  • ”Årstafruns dagbok” a dairy by Mrs Märta  Helena Renstierna 
  • “The World of Yesterday” by Stefan Zweig

Originally the event was scheduled to last approximately an hour but ended up lasting almost two hours. We sent out a survey to all the participants to get their feedback and see what can be done to improve the format before our next event which we expect will take place towards the end of July / beginning of August. More info coming soon!

Our first digital cultural café was presented by Alexander Maxia and Tove Ljung from Base10 startup hub in Uppsala. It took place on Thursday, July 2nd and people joined from four different countries. More events will follow, keep following us on social media and sign up to our mailing list here!

Big thanks to Jason Dainter, CEO of Base10 for kindly lending us the space to broadcast; Joakim Fichtel from Almi Uppsala for the support and advice leading up to the event and James Maxia for additional research into the topic presented.

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Coming up: Our First Digital Cultural Café!

As most of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we work and after halting our operation in planning events for several months we decided to go digital.

This will be our first ‘cultural café’ event in digital format (our second ever!) and even though we will not be physically in the same coffee house we will do our best to re-create that atmosphere via Zoom.

Yeah I know what you are thinking.. You have had enough lectures, seminars and meetings over the internet and the only thought might give you shudders. But fear not, we’ve got you covered! This will be different from your average Zoom event as we will combine parts in which we are all together – to smaller, more cozy discussions with groups of 4 to 5 people, just as if you were sitting with them at the same table in a café!

The key questions for this event’s topic:

  • Are historical sins ever to be forgiven?
  • Do we give focus to the right figures in history?
  • How do we re-evaluate actions and behaviours from the recent past within today’s society?

This Thursday, the 2:nd of July, we are going to discuss how we learn from history and how we reflect on historical events in today’s climate. We are going to question how actions and behaviors from the recent past fit within today’s society and whether we give focus to the right figures in history. Are historical sins ever to be forgiven? Let’s discuss!

The Cultural café is going to be held like this:

  1. You sign-up via the form (link below) and we will then email you a zoom-link so you can access.
  2. At the event – our hosts will welcome you and guide you through the topic
  3. At a later stage they will split you into smaller groups where you will get the chance to share your thoughts about given questions with 3 or 4 others.
  4. Towards the end of the event, we gather together once again and open to a floor discussion where we can share our thoughts with all the other participants.

We are not here to debate. We are here to have discussions and challenge our mindset. No answers are right or wrong, and the point of the events isn’t to come up with the right answers or test your knowledge. We are just here to discuss in a friendly atmosphere and question our assumptions.

Book yourself a spot for the event by signing up here!

As this is our very first event of the kind, we really encourage feedback on how we can make future cultural cafés even better.

  • When: 2nd July 2020 @ 20:00 (Central European Time)
  • Location: Zoom (link will be sent via email to those who signed up)
  • Discussions will be held in English
  • Presenters: Alexander Maxia and Tove Ljung

Any Questions? Contact us!

See you then!!

Don’t forget to invite your family, friends and colleagues; the more, the better! Share the event via social media:

Facebook Event

LinkedIn Event