Executive
Natalie Van Deusen, President; Book Review Editor, Scandinavian-Canadian Studies
Natalie Van Deusen is the inaugural Henry Cabot and Linnea Lodge Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Alberta, where she teaches a variety of courses on Scandinavian language, literature, and culture. Her research interests include Old Norse and Early Modern Icelandic paleography and philology, manuscript culture, hagiography and religious literature, and women’s and gender studies. She also serves as Book Review Editor for Scandinavian-Canadian Studies/Études scandinaves au Canada.
Email: vandeuse@ualberta.ca
Christine Ekholst, Vice President and Programming Chair
Christine Ekholst is a historian who researches gender and sexuality in medieval Scandinavia and Europe. She has taught at Carleton University and the University of Guelph in Canada. She is currently a research fellow at the Department of History at Uppsala University and will take up an assistant professorship there starting January 2018.
Email: christine.ekholst@gmail.com
John T. Nilson, Treasurer
John Nilson is a retired politician, having served in the Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly for over 20 years. John has held many government posts including Attorney General, Minister of Justice, Minister of Health, and Minister of the Environment. He even served briefly as the Interim Leader for the NDP (2011). He is a long-standing member of the AASSC.
E-mail: jnilson@sasktel.net
Helga Thorson, Editor, Scandinavian-Canadian Studies
Helga Thorson is Chair of the Department of Germanic & Slavic Studies at the University of Victoria. Her research and teaching interests focus on late nineteenth- and early twentieth century literature in Germany, Austria, and Scandinavia; foreign language pedagogy; and Holocaust studies. She began her term as editor of Scandinavian-Canadian Studies in 2014.
Email: scancan@uvic.ca
Guðrún Björk Guðsteinsdóttir, Secretary
Guðrún Björk Guðsteinsdóttir is Professor of English Literature in the Faculty of Language, Literature, and Linguistics at the University of Iceland. Her research interests are English Literature, especially North American Literature.
Email: gsteins@hi.is
Erin Halstad McGuire, AASSC Newsletter Editor and Webmaster
Erin Halstad McGuire joined the University of Victoria in 2010 as an Assistant Teaching Professor in Anthropology. She holds a PhD in Archaeology from the University of Glasgow, Scotland. Her main areas of interest are the Viking North Atlantic, funerary ritual, gender identities, material culture, migration and Medieval Archaeology. Her current research explores the theme of childhood in burial practices in Scandinavian Scotland. Erin’s secondary research interests revolve around the scholarship of learning and teaching, with a particular focus on supporting students during group work processes.
For the AASSC, Erin is Newsletter Editor and Webmaster
E-mail: ehalstad@uvic.caDanielle Turner, Assistant Newsletter Editor and Webmaster
Danielle Turner is finishing her M.A. in history at California State University, Fullerton. She studies the Viking Age, focusing specifically on philology, warfare, weather, and medicine. Danielle is internationally published and has worked as a special features presenter on the History Channel Show, VIKINGS.
E-mail: daniellepatsy@csu.fullerton.edu
Marit Ann Barkve, Member at Large
Marit Ann Barkve received her PhD Candidate from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Her research interests include Scandinavian literature, migration, Scandinavian-American literature, and Nordic feminisms.
E-mail: Barkve@wisc.eduAnu Muhonen, Member at Large
Anu Muhonen has previously worked at Stockholm University in Sweden (2002-2014) and is the incumbent Director and Assistant Professor of Finnish Studies Program at the University of Toronto. She teaches Finnish language, literature and culture as well as Scandinavian courses. Her research interests are in the field of sociolinguistics: multilingualism, language and identity, cultural representations of identity, translanguaging, multilingual pedagogy and home language maintenance.
E-mail: anu.muhonen@utoronto.ca
Ingrid Urberg, Past President
Ingrid Urberg is an Associate Professor of Scandinavian Studies on the Augustana Campus, University of Alberta where she teaches a variety of Norwegian language, Scandinavian literature and Scandinavian culture courses. Her research focuses on personal narratives and polar literature, and this has brought her to Northern Norway, Greenland and Svalbard. She is also working on an oral history project, The Norwegian Immigrant Experience in Alberta.
E-mail: iurberg@ualberta.ca