(Photo: Luca Ferrante, Rome.)
My research revolves around literature and the human mind. I have investigated questions such as how literature entwines with the our lifeworld, how it models consciousness and how writers work creatively. My long-standing interest in the history of the novel has led me to bring Early-Modern poetics, narratives and literary games into dialogue with today’s cognitive approaches to literature.
I'm the initiator and founding director of LCE – Centre for Literature, Cognition and Emotions. The centre builds on long-term interdisciplinary collaborations with colleagues across literary studies, psychology, linguistics and anthropology. Our LCE Podcast has three seasons available.
Recently, I have completed a book on Creativity and Contingency in Literary Writing. My current project JEUX – Literary Games, Poetics and the Early-Modern Novel is funded by an ERC-Consolidator Grant and investigates how literary games facilitated novelists’ narrative innovations.
I have been awarded the UiO Younger Researcher Prize (2019), and I am an elected member of the Academy of Europe (since 2022).
A full list of my publications can be found on my Google Scholar profile. Most of my publications are available in Open Access under «Publications» below.
Academic interests
Narratology; Poetics; Eighteenth-Century Literature; Seventeenth-Century Literature; Comics and Graphic Novels; Cognitive Literary Study
Earlier Projects
Probability Designs: Literature and Predictive Processing
How the Novel Found its Feet: Embodiment in Eighteenth-Century Fiction
A Prehistory of Cognitive Poetics: Neoclassicism and the Novel
For more on my research and publications, see my profiles on ResearchGate and Google Scholar.
Courses taught
- LIT1301 Vestens litteratur antikken til 1700
- LIT1302 Vestens litteratur 1700-1900
- LIT4340A/LIT4340B Litterært tekststudium I: Mimesis
- LIT4310A/LIT4310B Litteraturteoretisk studium I: Cognitive Literary Study
- LIT2340 Sjangerstudium: The Makings of a Genre: The Eighteenth-Century Novel
- LIT2300 Litteraturtheoretisk emne: The Theory and History of Reading