I am Professor of English Literature at Umeå University, Sweden and among other things, my research has concerned postmodern romance, Irish women's literature and Irish book history.
I am Professor of English Literature at Umeå University, Sweden and among other things, my research has concerned postmodern romance, Irish women's literature and Irish book history. I have also conducted research in the fields of Northern and Arctic Studies.
Between 2002 and 2009 I led the interdisciplinary research programme Foreign North: Outside Perspectives on the Nordic North. Within this programme, I investigated gendered visions and accounts of the North in particular. I have also investigated representations of the Arctic and polar exploration in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century comic periodicals and how the Arctic is represented in literature for children and young adults.
Lately, I have begun to look into late nineteenth-century journal culture, and in this context I am developing a project about the forms of fiction in nineteenth-century intellectual periodicals. I have frequently returned to the question of the relations between text and landscape, and have used eco-critical perspectives to understand phenomena in both fiction and non-fiction.
At the moment, I am working with a project tentatively called ”Bildung in the battery belt” where we aim to work together with representatives from industry, the public sector and cultural and educational organisations to investigate the relationship between regional and human processes of Bildung.
I am the chair of Folkuniversitetet, Region Norr och a member of the national board of Folkuniversitetet. I am also the chair of the steering committee of HanaAcademy, the organisation for academic, bilateral collaboration between Sweden and Finland under Kulturfonden för Sverige och Finland. In 2023, I have a position as Rector’s advisor at University.
Academic merits:
Professor of English focusing on literature, Umeå University (2007)
Degree of Doctor of Arts in English (1998)
Managerial merits:
Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Umeå University (2016–2022 )
Acting Head of Department and Head of Department, Department of Language Studies, Umeå University (2014)
Deputy Head of Department, Department of Language Studies, Umeå University (parts of 2008; 2009—2014)