For a long time, I believed that everyone deserves a voice. When I first started studying journalism at 18, I was determined to make it my life mission to give people a voice. Not too long after that, I got burnt out, quit uni and promised myself to never become a journalist. It felt too hard, too overwhelming and too long of a road ahead.
I came to spend the coming three years after that travelling and moving between countries, before moving back to the little town of Jönköping in southern Sweden. It was around the time of Covid, so the already quiet town somehow felt even more quiet.
Jönköping, Sweden ca 2021. Photographer: Pernilla Bursell
In the midst of that quiet, I felt a spark coming back to me. Telling me to go find that purpose I had let go of.
So there I was, back behind the school bench. Once again determined to work towards the purpose I thought I’d left behind.
One evening, my classmates and I had been invited to an evening lecture by Swedish journalist and writer Alexandra Pascalidou. She said a lot of really good things, but one thing stuck and completely changed my perspective on my own journey.
I walked out of there no longer believing my mission of giving people a voice made sense. I no longer believed that giving people a voice was something I could do.
It took one sentence to change my perspective on journalism entirely: “You don’t give people a voice, they already have one. You just give them a microphone.”
And that is what has now become my mission. Because people are not voiceless. We all think, we feel and we believe. But in contrast to the world I grew up in, a lot of voices around our round globe are silenced.
My father used to tell me that as humans, we own the right to question things around us. But the reality of our current society is unfortunately so, that not all humans own the right to question, or to voice their story. I grew up with that right. Many don’t. And the more I understood that, the more I felt drawn to the voices closest to me.
And so the next time I held the microphone up, waiting for an answer to a question, I didn’t see it as their voice being mine to give, but them handing me their story to tell.
Working for Swedish Public Service Television SVT, summer 2023.
Stories of Thailand was born as a result of this growth. As much as I am Swedish, I am also Thai. By blood — but also by language, by love for our culture and our complex history.
One of my teachers once said something along the lines of “We can’t afford to forget our history.” It’s a sentence I’ve carried with me throughout my professional career, as well as into this next step as an independent journalist.
Stories of Thailand was created to dive into the stories we rarely question — and the ones we do question, but rarely get answers to. It’s meant to be a space for culture, stories and history; both the beautiful and the ugly.
Doi Chang, Chiang Rai, Thailand 2025. Photographer: Felicia Bengtsson
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