University of Gothenburg
University of Gothenburg
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Per Holmberg

Professor

Department of Swedish, multilingualism, language
technology
Telephone
+46 31-786 44 68
+46 735-79 06 87
Mail
per.holmberg@svenska.gu.se
Visiting address
Renströmsgatan 6
41255 Göteborg
Room number
F311
Postal address
Box 200
40530 Göteborg

About Per Holmberg

In our modern society, it is necessary to handle a stream of texts in private and professional contexts. I am interested in how norms for different text types and writing situations change, and how we learn to use writing in new ways. Based on that interest, my research has recently concerned texts as diverse as students’ assignments, job advertisements and Viking Age runestones.

I am on leave during the fall of 2024 to finish a research project at Linköping University.

Current research projects

  • New wine in old barrels or old wine in new barrels? The establishment of didactics for the subject of Swedish as a research field (The Swedish Research Council 2021–2024) with Bengt-Göran Martinsson and Maritha Johansson.
  • The Linguistic Landscape of Runestones (application to The Swedish Research Council for 2025–2028) with Cecilia Ljung, Anna Nykvist Thorsson, Sonia Pereswetoff-Morath and Jonathan Westin.

Completed research projects (selection)

  • Rök Runestone Revisited (The Swedish Research Council 2017–2020).
  • The interpersonal grammar of job advertisements (2018–2019) with Karin Helgesson.
  • L1 research in the Nordic countries (2016–2019) with Anna Nordenstam.
  • Text structure in discursive writing of Upper Secondary students (Skolverket 2017) with Britt-Marie Apelgren.

Teaching and supervision

I mainly teach courses on the analysis of texts and genres, on systemic functional linguistics and on writing research. Above all, I have worked on developing the training for future teachers of Swedish.

I have supervised ten PhD students who have investigated various aspects of learning, text and interaction. The latest to defend her thesis was Anna Winlund who studied literacy instruction for newly immigrated adolescents.