Lecturer

Sofie Malmborg Hansen

Lecturer
Danish language

Sofie Malmborg Hansen is a Danish novelist with an MA in Anthropology from the University of Copenhagen. Sofie’s debut novel, Bargums synder (2020), about Danish transatlantic slave trade, received the Danish Debutantpris, a prize awarded annually to the best literary fiction debut published in Denmark. She moved to the Bay Area in August 2021 to work as a lecturer at UC Berkeley’s Scandinavian Department, where she currently teaches courses on Scandinavian colonialism and contemporary Nordic novels, in addition to Beginning and Intermediate Danish. In all her classes, she aims to foster...

John Prusynski

Lecturer
Norwegian Language

John Prusynski teaches four semesters of Norwegian language, a course on pan-Scandinavian reading strategies, and occasional courses on contemporary Nordic literature. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he wrote a dissertation about travel and movement in Sámi literature, looking at works from the late 1800s to the present. His current research focuses on works by contemporary Sámi authors such as Jalvvi Niillas Holmberg, Inger-Mari Aikio, and Moa Backe Åstot, and he is interested in how ideas surrounding identity, the international, queerness, and...

Lotta Weckström

Language Coordinator, Continuing Lecturer
Finnish

Lotta Weckström’s research interest centers on sociolinguistics, social anthropology and the subjective, yet often shared, experience of migration, alternative narratives, digital humanities, ethnographic research, and oral histories. In her work, she combines sociolinguistics, rhetoric and argumentation and the study of migration in interdisciplinary projects. For her dissertation she worked with young people with Finnish background in Sweden focusing on cultural heritage, language use and feelings of national belonging. Her research specialties are linguistic minorities, migrant women in...