invited panellists

During the conference, a discussion panel examined the future prospects for multidisciplinary Nordic research, with the input of invited participants and conference delegates. Please see below for the profiles of invited participants.

Professor Helena Forsås-Scott

Helena Forsås-Scott was Professor of Swedish and Gender Studies at University College London (retired 2010). She is now an Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh Her research focuses on writing by women, with an emphasis on narrative, intermediality and ecocriticism. She has published Swedish Women's Writing 1850-1995 (1997) and Re-Writing the Script: Gender and Community in Elin Wägner (2009; 2nd ed. 2014), and her edited volumes include Textual Liberation: European Feminist Writing in the Twentieth Century (1991; reprint 2014). With Lisbeth Stenberg and Bjarne Th. Thomsen she has edited Re-Mapping Lagerlöf: Performance, Intermediality and European Transmissions (2014). She is currently working on a study of Kerstin Ekman.

Dr Pietari Kääpä


Pietari Kääpä is Lecturer in Media and Communications at University of Stirling. His work synergizes transnational and ecocritical media studies, with a specific focus on how these concerns play out in the Nordic context. Book publications include Ecology and Contemporary Nordic Cinema (2014), The Cinema of Mika Kaurismäki (2011) and several collections on Finnish film culture (including Directory of World Cinema: Finland, 2012 and World Film Locations: Helsinki, 2012). Coedited collections include Nordic Genre Film: Small Nation Film Culture in the Global Marketplace (2015) and Transnational Ecocinema: Film Culture in an Era of Ecological Transformation (2013). He currently works on a project on environmental media management in the Nordic countries, funded by a grant from the British Academy.

Dr Claire Thomson


Claire Thomson is Senior Lecturer in Scandinavian Film at University College London, where she was Head of Department of Scandinavian Studies 2009-2013. Claire is a University of Edinburgh graduate (MA, MSc, PhD, 1992-2003), lectured at the University of East Anglia (2000-2004), and is a Visiting Researcher at the Danish Film Institute. Publications include Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen (University of Washington Press, 2013) and Northern Constellations: New Readings in Nordic Cinema (ed., Norvik Press, 2006). She is currently completing a monograph on Danish state-sponsored film. She is an editor of the journals Scandinavica and Kosmorama. 

Dr Alan Macniven

Alan Macniven is Lecturer in Swedish at the University of Edinburgh. His  current research focuses on cultural interaction, principally between Norse and native in western maritime Scotland during the Viking Age.   Although dogmatically interdisciplinary, and touching on aspects of history, archaeology, literature, and philology, the main source materials for his work have been the names of places and associated settlement studies. 

Dr Guy Puzey
[Chair]

Guy Puzey is a postdoctoral research fellow in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Edinburgh, where he is currently working on a centre development project and teaching Norwegian. His main research interests are in language policy and critical toponomastics, particularly in the contexts of the Nordic countries and Scotland. He has recently carrried out projects on the relative visibility of languages in public spaces, language activism, multilingual corporate identities, and commemorative street naming. He also works as a course organiser for Germanic and Slavonic languages at the Office of Lifelong Learning. Outside the University, he is a freelance translator of Norwegian literature.