I am a qualified upper secondary school teacher and completed my PhD in 2002 with a dissertation on a Latin school text from the thirteenth century, published by an international academic publisher. This research led to further studies of the development of reading and writing literacy in Sweden during the seventeenth century, as well as to a book on Sweden’s earliest working-class literature (Gidlunds, 2023), which has been awarded a scientific prize. My current research project examines how student teachers’ learning processes in thesis work can be understood as an autonomous and self-referential system.
I have extensive experience in higher education teaching and supervision at universities in Sweden and internationally. I have taught across a range of subject areas, including literary studies, Swedish, German, and media and communication studies, and within most teacher education programmes at both undergraduate and graduate levels, including alternative and supplementary routes to teacher certification. For many years, I have primarily taught philosophy of science and supervised thesis work at bachelor’s and master’s levels, as well as doctoral projects.
My research focuses on literature, education, and learning from historical and didactic perspectives. As a literary historian, I study medieval and early modern literature, with particular attention to the development of reading and writing literacy in seventeenth-century Sweden and literary texts connected to working life at Falu Mine. I also research writing and knowledge formation in higher education, especially student teachers’ thesis work and learning processes.