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Linda Karlsson Hammarfelt

Assistant Head of Department

Department of Languages and Literatures
Telephone
+46 31-786 52 63
+46 766-18 52 63
Mail
linda.karlsson.hammarfelt@sprak.gu.se
Visiting address
Renströmsgatan 6
41255 Göteborg
Postal address
Box 200
40530 Göteborg

Senior Lecturer

Department of Languages and Literatures
Telephone
+46 31-786 52 63
+46 766-18 52 63
Mail
linda.karlsson.hammarfelt@sprak.gu.se
Visiting address
Renströmsgatan 6
41256 Göteborg
Room number
D428B
Postal address
Box 200
40530 Göteborg

About Linda Karlsson Hammarfelt

Background

I earned my PhD in September 2011 from Stockholm University and Justus Liebig University Giessen (within the framework of PhDnet Literary and Cultural Studies), with a dissertation on the works of Katja Lange-Müller: Praktiken im Zwischenraum. Transitorisches Schreiben bei Katja Lange-Müller. From 2012 to 2014, I was a postdoctoral researcher in German at the University of Gothenburg, Department of Languages and Literatures. After that, I held a binational postdoctoral position affiliated with the universities in Gothenburg and Hamburg, funded by the Swedish Research Council. Since autumn 2019, I have been employed as a Senior Lecturer in German with a focus on literary studies.

Research

My research focuses on modern and contemporary German-language literature, with particular interest in spatiality and mobility; transnationalism and postmigration; and family and gender.

In my postdoctoral project Mapping the Fluid Self. Water Writing and Transculturality in Contemporary German Literature, I drew on the notion of our time as a "liquid" era and globalization theories that emphasize flows of people, goods, and information. I examined autobiographies and novels with a focus on how fluidity is portrayed and functionalized in narratives about the hybrid self. Building on this, I continued with the project Fluid Encounters. River, Harbor, Archipelago as Figurations of Transnational Subjectivity in Contemporary Literature, funded by the Centre for Sea and Society. This project focused on literary representations of spatialities shaped by the interplay between land and water.

Currently, in the project Thicker than Water? Migration, Kinship and the Nation in Contemporary German Literature, I explore how contemporary German-language family novels examine and play with the traditional analogy between family and nationhood, offering a critical reflection on the concepts of nation, nation-state, and nationalism. As part of this project, I organized the conference "Familie, Nation und andere (vorgestellte) Gemeinschaften" in summer 2024.

National and international networks and scholarly associations

  • MOVENS – ästhetische und kulturelle Grenzen und Grenzüberschreitungen. German literature studies network connecting the universities of Berlin (FU), Greifswald, Gothenburg, Limerick, Ljubljana, London (Queen Mary University) and Stockholm.
  • Germanistische Literaturwissenschaft Schweden. PhDnet: Literary and Cultural Studies, a cooperation between the universities of Stockholm, Helsinki, Gießen, Lisbon and Bergamo. 
(Supported by DAAD – Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst). 2008–2011.
  • Autobiographisches Schreiben in der deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur. Nordic network of German literature studies (Financed by NordForsk).
 2006–2008.

Teaching and supervision

I teach courses in German at all levels and supervise degree projects and theses at the bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate levels in German (especially German literature).

Administrative and leadership responsibility

I currently serve as Assistant Head of Department for Doctoral Studies at the Department of Languages and Literatures.

Since autumn 2018, I have represented the Faculty of Humanities on the steering committee of CERGU (Centre for European Research at the University of Gothenburg).