As an educated historian and anthropologist from the University of Aarhus, my career has followed two different roads, one of research, and one of management. Research at the Royal Danish School of Education, the University of Copenhagen, and at the National Archives. Manegement at the Royal Library, at the Danish Ministry of Culture, and at the Danish Institute of Advanced Research. The research subjects have reached from the history of all kinds of women (and some men) in business, culture, schools and education, politics and organisations during the 19. og 20. centuries. I have been studying gender history and theories, written about the art of biographies, and published several biographies om pioneers in education, politics, business, and life. See my list of publications.
My authorship is inspired by my curiosity:. I consider myself ‘a detective’ of cultural history. In several works and publications, I have documented the base of our past having been built by both women and men. I aim to show that history includes both power and empowerment, suppression and rebellion as well as complexity and variety. As sober as possible, I try ‘to humanize’ the writing of history, telling of men and women, the cultural gender pattern, and the spirit of times.
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International books
Will, works and values
2022
Ever since its inception in the second half of the nineteenth century, the Carlsberg brewery has been a role model in many areas across the realms of business, science, art, culture and patronage. J.C. Jacobsen and his wife, Laura Jacobsen’s initiative, vision and stability have been an inspiration for many subsequent generations.
Travesías biográficas. Un diálogo interdisciplinar
2022
After years of shortcomings or ups and downs, the biography is on the way back again. In this book, voices from different nationalities and specialties are integrated; men and women, youth and veterans, exploring and revealing the general routes of the biographical journey or recounting their own entanglements.
Understanding Biographies
2016
Biographies fly off the shelves; many will happily be swallowed whole. There are nevertheless those who despise the genre. The history of the biography is as long as that of the world’s supposedly oldest profession, and as writers, critics and readers our attitude to biographies is much the same as our attitude to courtesans: we view them with curiosity, attracted and repelled, but we have very little desire to get any closer.
La historia biográfica en Europa
2015
La historia biográfica en Europa (eds. Isabel Burdiel & Roy Foster), Zaragoza 2015, on biographical traditions in Europe. My contribution is about the work and methods behind the life-work-time biography of Natalie Zahle and the polyphonic biography of the politician Bodil Koch.
Biography, gender and history: nordic perspectives
2016
Since the turn of the twenty-first century historians, alongside with literary scholars and social scientists, have developed a renewed interest in researching the individual, a development which is commonly referred to as the biographical turn. Historical biography is an old practice with a strong but often debated relationship with history as an academic discipline.
Historiallinen elämä
2014
Historiallinen elämä. Biografia ja historiantutkimus (eds. Hakosalo, Jalagin, Junila & Kurvinen) on historical biographies. My contribution is a historical-methodological introduction to the biographical genre and to various biographical narrative traditions and ethics.
Zahle - Awaking the promise of the soul
2002
Nathalie Zahle's personal and strategic deliberations; a condensed version of the story of a education pioneer in mid 19th century Denmark.