Paula Ryggvik Mikalsen
Research interests
I am a literary scholar with a PhD in Nordic literature and extensive experience of interdisciplinary research environments at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. My research centres on feminist epistemologies and methodology, with a particular emphasis on listening as a knowledge practice in the humanities and across the social world. More broadly, I work at the intersection of sound and sensory studies, environmental humanities, and gender studies. I am interested in exploring how listening can open up more inclusive, caring, and responsible ways of understanding both human and more-than-human environments.
As a postdoctoral researcher in feminist studies on the project Arctic Auditories – Hydrospheres in the High North, I have worked with research communication, fieldwork-adjacent perspectives, and collective practices of writing and reflection. This latter work has fostered an academic interest in the concept of “care” and in non-hierarchical ways of working in academia. I am concerned with how critical theory can be translated into concrete pedagogical and institutional practices, and with how it can provide tools for co-creating positive, transformative learning environments.
During my doctoral research fellowship, I worked on illness narratives and Scandinavian Gothic, examining how Gothic devices can help to cut through linguistic and cultural barriers in order to convey the lived experience and affect of illnesses such as cancer, eating disorders, and dementia.
Through my publications, teaching, and scholarly organisational work, I also contribute to strengthening conversations about feminist knowledge production, accessibility, and sustainable futures at universities and in society.
RESEARCH ARES OF INTEREST:
Feminist methodologies
Feminist epistemologies
Gothic Literature Studies
Environmental Humanities
Monster methodologies
Medical Humanities
Gender Studies
EcoGothic
Nordic and Scandinavian Gothic
Teaching
Vår 2024 HIF-2106 Tverrfaglige kjønnsstudier
Vår 2020 NOR-3134 Skandinavisk barne-og ungdomslitteratur
Vår 2020 NOR-3132 Kjønnsforskning i nordisk litteraturvitenskap
NOR-3147 Health- and Illness Research in the Humanities
Member of research group / centre
Member of project
CV
Postdoc in feminist studies, Centre for Womens and Gender Research (2023- )
PhD in Nordic Literature, "Illness and Scandinavian Gothic: Unnatural Illness Narratives in Scandinavian Fiction" (2022)
MA in English literature, 2013-2015, UiT
"But you can't get me out of the story": Feminist revision of Fairy Tales in Short Stories by Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter".
Åse Hiort Lerviks Award for Best MA thesis with a gendered topic, UiT, 2016
Teaching, NOR-3147, spring 2018
International Gothic Association Conference 2018 in Manchester, conference with contribution
Symposium in Paris September 2018, "Patient as Text - revisited", symposium with contribution