Helen Asklund

I work as a senior lecturer in Comparative literature at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSV), but also as an educational developer at the Division of Research and Educational Support (FUS).
As a senior lecturer I teach at both freestanding courses in comparative literature and at teacher program courses. My specialities are YA literature and literary didactics.
Since April 2022, I am deputy head of department at HSV with responsibility for the subjects English linguistics, Comparative literature, Swedish and Swedish as a second language.
I am the representative for HSV in the Mid Sweden University ULF group, which works on issues related to the national initiative Education, Learning and Research (ULF), focusing on collaboration between universities and schools.
I am one of four editors of the report series Utbildningsvetenskapliga studier (Educational Science Studies) at Mid Sweden University.
As an educational developer, I teach courses in higher education pedagogy. I am also a member of the Committee for teacher accreditation and take on assignments as an external educational expert.

Background

Since 2010, I have intermittently taught literature at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSV), and since 2023 I have held a permanent position as senior lecturer.
From 2016 to 2018, I worked as a librarian focusing both on research-related and teaching-related services.
I also have previous experience working as a public librarian, an upper secondary school teacher, and as a literature consultant within the regional library sector. I have carried out several reading promotion projects funded by the Swedish Arts Council.
2013: Master´s degree in Library and Information Science, The University of Borås
2012: Teacher Certification for working at the Upper Secondary School
2008: PhD in Comparative Literature, Uppsala University (at the time under the surname Schmidl), with the literature didactics dissertation From Wilderness to Green Angel. Reception Analyses of Reading in Eighth Grade
2000: Master of Education for the Upper Secondary School in sw/en, Malmö University

Area of interest

YA Literature
Children´s and young people´s reading
Didactics of literature
Fiction in care and social work
Teaching in Higher Education

Research

Together with Lena Manderstedt (Luleå University of Technology) and Ann-Sofie Persson (Linköping University), I am involved in several projects on horse stories. The first aims to collect readers' experiences of horse stories through interviews and compile them into an anthology, to be published by Makadam in 2026. The other is intended as an overview of the development of the horse story genre in Sweden from 1891 to the present day.
Together with Ingela Norberg, lecturer in Swedish language, I have received funding for a didactic project aimed at developing collaboration around teaching practice (VFU) in the subject teacher education program.

Teaching and tutoring

I teach first level and advanced courses in literary studies and literature didactics within teacher education programs, as well as courses in creative writing and literature and health.
I teach higher education pedagogy, including as course coordinator for the course Writing a Teaching Portfolio. I am also a mentor on the national course Assessing Educational Competence.