Claire Thomson spent a one-year research sabbatical as Visiting Researcher at the DFI. Born 1974, Claire was educated at the University of Edinburgh, with an MA in EU Studies, French and Danish (1996), an M.Sc. in the Practice and Theory of Translation (1997), and a PhD in Scandinavian Studies (2003). From 2000 to 2004, she worked as a Lecturer in Contemporary Scandinavian Studies at the University of East Anglia, before moving to UCL in 2004 to take up a Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellowship as part of the programme Identities and Culture in Europe since 1945. From 2009 to 2013 she was Head of Department of Scandinavian Studies at UCL, and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in Scandinavian Film in 2013.
Danish national identity has been a red thread in Claire’s research since her PhD thesis on Danish literature of the 1990s; her current project combines this interest in how national identities are shaped, reflected and renegotiated in various forms of media with more recently developed interests in film institutions and in medium-specificity. Claire recently published a monograph on Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen for the Washington University Press Nordic Film Classics series, has edited three volumes of essays on Nordic cinema, literature and culture, and has published a range of articles on topics including short films, space and the senses in cinema, Carl Th. Dreyer og Thomas Vinterberg, as well as on various aspects of identity and narrative in Danish literature. Her interdisciplinary involvement includes UCL’s Urban Laboratory [www.ucl.ac.uk/urbanlab] and the Centre for Multidisciplinary & Intercultural Inquiry [http://www.ucl.ac.uk/multidisciplinary-and-intercultural-inquiry].
Alongside research and teaching, Claire has been heavily involved in the development of public engagement and enterprise in the Humanities at UCL. This activity has included leading on events and exhibitions, acting as a Director of Norvik Press [www.norvikpress.com], and working with embassies and other organisations to design and fund new Impact PhD studentships to strengthen Danish and Swedish literature in translation in the UK. She has also podcasted and written and performed four stand-up comedy sets for Bright Club [www.brightclub.org], an academic variety show designed to mediate research to a wide audience.
UCL homepage: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/selcs/people/scandinavian-studies-staff/claire-thomson