Academic interests
My research interests lie in the fields of literature and ethics, literature and emotion (with a particular focus on empathy), literary didactics, and intercultural communication.
My current work is centered on the development of an ethics of reading informed by a central aesthetic-ethical issue in literature that I term "the paradox of narrative empathy." The most recent article within the scope of this project examines ethical dimensions in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, with a particular focus on the novel’s ending (2025). A forthcoming article explores the themes of silence, trauma, and the ethics of reading in The Garden of Evening Mists by Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng.
Another strand of my research, situated within the field of literary didactics, examines how literature can contribute to the cultivation of intercultural and democratic competence. A forthcoming article, entitle "Literature and Trauma: Towards a Pedagogy of Implication in the English Language Classroom", explores this further, with particular attention to how working with trauma literature can raise literary-didactic and ethical questions concerning implication, responsibility, and ways of engaging with and responding to traumatic experiences. I have also conducted research on written retelling as a didactic strategy in literature education for students who have Swedish as a second language.
Teaching and Supervision
- SFE11220 Britisk kultur (Høst 2023)
- LMUENG40217 ENG402 Interkulturell læring (5-10)
- LMBENG40217 ENG402 Interkulturell læring (1-7)
- SFE41115 Interkulturell læring og demokratisk kultur
- Supervision of Master Theses in MFRISK
- Supervision of Master Theses in English LMUENG40517 ENG405
- Supervision of Master Theses in English LMBENG40517 ENG405
Background
I’ve taught English and other subjects and supervised and examined Bachelor and Master Theses at a range of universities, amongst them Lund University, Linnaeus University, North Carolina Central University, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, before joining The Department of Languages, Literature and Culture here at Östfold. I have a PhD in English Literature from Lund University, and I did my postdoc at Umeå University in Literary Studies with a didactic approach. I've spent one term as a Visiting Scholar at Duke University and a year as a Visiting Graduate Student at Worcester College, Oxford University
Awards
- Award for "Best Dissertation on Margaret Atwood", The Margaret Atwood Society
- Award for "Excellence in Teaching and Collegiality", College of Liberal Arts, North Carolina Central University