Graduate Student

Isobel Boles

Graduate Student

Isobel Boles is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Scandinavian Department, where she also completed her master’s degree. She earned dual Bachelor of the Arts degrees in Classics, and German and Scandinavian Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2015. While there, she studied Latin, Ancient Greek, Old Norse, Swedish, Icelandic, and Old Irish languages and literature. Her undergraduate thesis was titled “Courtly Romance in Cold Lands: Ívens saga, Parcevals saga, and Erex saga,” and explored how...

Love Carlshamre

Graduate Student

Love Carlshamre is a PhD candidate in the Scandinavian Department, where he is writing a dissertation about America in modern and contemporary Swedish literature. He holds a B.A. (2018) and M.A. (2020) in Comparative Literature from Stockholm University and has worked as an editorial coordinator at Albert Bonnier Publishing. At Berkeley, he has taught Swedish on both beginning and intermediate levels and is currently teaching a Reading & Composition course about the Scandinavian short story.

Sarah Eriksen

Graduate Student

Originally an architecture major at UC Berkeley, Sarah Bienko Eriksen signed up for an introductory Danish class in the fall of 2004 when something else fell through. One thing led to another and in 2008 she graduated with a BA in Scandinavian Studies and Comparative Literature. For the next five years she wrote, traveled, and taught, including a semester as an EFL instructor in Santiago, Chile. Her interest in folklore brought her back to the field in 2013, when she began the Viking and Medieval Norse Studies at the University of Iceland. Sarah wrote her Master’s thesis...

Victoria Häggblom

Graduate Student

Victoria Häggblom is a writer and translator of Swedish with an MFA from Columbia University. Her translation of poet Bruno K. Öijer’s The Trilogy won the American-Scandinavian Foundation’s translation prize and her short fiction has been published in several literary journals. Her interests are Critical Theory, Ecocriticism, Creative Writing, and Scandinavian modernist literature.

Olivia Larson

Graduate Student

B.A in Psychology, B.A in Scandinavian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Olivia is a PhD student in the Department of Scandinavian at UC Berkeley. During her undergraduate studies at UW-Madison, she focused on Nynorsk literature and was the Lead Program Coordinator of the Norden House in the International Learning Community. Her current research interests center around Norwegian polar exploration, particularly explorers’ implementation of indigenous Inuit and Sámi knowledge on their expeditions, and how this knowledge allowed Norwegian...

Michael Lawson

Graduate Student

Michael Lawson is a 4th-year PhD student in the Department of Scandinavian with a dual focus on Scandinavian Languages & Literatures and Medieval Studies.

Michael began his academic journey at East Tennessee State University, earning a B.A. in Education in 2017 and an M.A. in History in 2019. His thesis, “Children of a One-Eyed God: Impairment in the Myth and Memory of Medieval Scandinavia,” explored the body as a conceptual space in both the mythopoetic and literary spheres of medieval Iceland. Michael further pursued his passion for Scandinavian studies at Berkeley, where he...

Joshua Lee

Graduate Student

Joshua Lee is a current PhD student at UC Berkeley’s Department of Scandinavian. He received his BA from the University of Edinburgh in History and Politics in 2020, an MLitt in Mediaeval History from the University of St Andrews in 2021, and an MA in Scandinavian Languages and Literature from UC Berkeley in 2024. His MLitt thesis was entitled ‘Friendship and Mistrust: characterising interactions between Scoto-Norse leaders and Norwegian kings c.1100-1260’.

He has been awarded the Fritz O. Fernström fellowship for studies in Norwegian at the University of Oslo. His interests in the...

Natalya Nielsen

Graduate Student

Natalya is a current PhD student at the department of Scandinavian with a Designated Emphasis in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. She obtained a B.A. in English and Scandinavian Studies at BYU in 2021, and received her M.A. from UC Berkeley in 2023. Her research interests include the relationship between Nordic literature and its political contexts, especially as it relates to the political landscape of women (including trans women) and gender queer individuals.

She is also interested in narratives of white nationalism and how these narratives show up in...

Emily Shishima

Graduate Student
Emily is a PhD student in the department of Scandinavian at UC Berkeley. She is a fifth-generation Japanese-American from Los Angeles. She received her M.Phil. (2022) from the University of Cambridge in modern European history and her dual B.A. (2020) from UC Santa Barbara in history and global studies. She has also taken Scandinavian courses at University College London (2018), UCLA (2019), and the University of Oslo (2021). During her undergraduate career she received High Honors, College Honors, Dean’s Honors, and the Academic Excellence Award.


Emily’s dissertation whilst at...