Research areas

My research focuses on the social and political dimensions of literature, especially as they relate to topics such as inequality, marginalization, and labor — as well as their intersectional entanglements with factors such as gender, age, and ethnicity.

My expertise lies in Danish and Scandinavian literature from the late 1800s to the present. I have also published research on Western European and American 'social literature' from the same period. An example is the monograph I ambivalent kamp. Strejkeromanen 1850–1950 [In Ambivalent Battle: The Strike Novel, 1850–1950] (2023), which investigates the strike as a transnational literary topos.

I have published widely on Danish working-class literature; literature of commitment; welfare-state and post-welfare-state literature; representations of precarization; and female proletarian fiction. More recently, I have investigated the relations and exchanges between Scandinavian left-wing writers and the Soviet literary system.

In addition, I have contributed to the field of literary gerontology, for instance through my second book Sidste punktum. Alderdom, endelighed og narrativt begær i den samtidige livsafslutningsroman [Final Sentence: Old Age, Finality, and Narrative Desire in the Contemporary End-of-Life Novel] (2024).

In terms of theory, my work addresses literary history and historiography; literary topoi; class; precarization; political theory; and theories of narrative endings.

Outside academia, I have worked as a literary critic at Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten since 2014.

Current projects:

• Precariat, Precarity and Precariousness in (Post-) Welfare-State Scandinavian Literatures (project participant), 2023-2026.
• The forgotten Cultural and Literary History of the Danish Union Press, 1870-1940 (PI), 2025-2027 
• Welfare under Scrutiny. Precarious Life in Contemporary Norwegian Literature (project participant), 2026-2029