Tobias Skiveren

• Presentation
• Research outputs
• Prizes
• Activities

I'm a literary scholar working in the environmental humanities, with a special interest in ecocriticism, new materialism, and debates about (post)critique. I've written several books about (contemporary) Danish literature and published in journals like New Literary History, Environmental Humanities, Theory, Culture & Society, Literature and Medicine, Utopian Studies, and Theory & Event. Some of this work has been translated into french, danish, and chinese.

In the coming years, I'll be leading a large project about Indigenous Ecologies and Scandinavian colonialism, taking Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland as a key example ("Environmental Colonialism in Greenland: Tracing the Cultural Transformations of Indigenous Ecologies in Literature, Film, and Art"). With this project, we hope to develop a theoretical understanding of the narrative mechanisms that transform and marginalize non-instrumentalist conceptions of nature, as these conceptions travel into the western cultural imagination. This project is funded by the Independant Research Fund Denmark (Sapere Aude, 2025-2028).

I'm currently working on a book project, tentatively titlen Utopian Literacy: Toward a Solarpunk Pedagogy. As a philosophical teaching manifesto targeting environmental humanists as educators, the book argues that the solarpunk movement can help us advance 'utopian literacy' as a pedagogical response to current challenges with apathetic and overwhelmed students. The book project builds on a three-year research project on ecocritical pedagogies that I'm currently leading (“Environmental Literacy in L1 Education: Greening Danish Literary History”). This project too is funded by the Independant Research Fund Denmark (FP1, 2023-2025).

 

Projects and Research Grants:

PI: "Environmental Colonialism in Greenland: Tracing the Cultural Transformations of Indigenous Ecologies in Literature, Film, and Art" (DFF, Sapere Aude)

PI: "Environmental Literacy in L1 Education: Greening Danish Literary History" (DFF, research project1, thematic)

PI: "Neoliberal Misfits: Literary Illness Narratives from the Nordic Welfare States" (DFF, international postdoc)

Co-applicant: "Young Literary Practices" (PI Stefan Kjerkegaard, DFF, research project2)

Co-applicant: "The Science of Fiction" (PI Simona Zetterberg-Nielsen, DFF, research project1)

Co-applicant: "The Rise of Science and Fiction during the Danish Enlightenment" (PI Simona Zetterberg-Nielsen, VELUX, core group)

Selected publications

1. Postcritique and the Problem of the Lay Reader

   Skiveren, Tobias, 2022, In: New Literary History. 53, 1

   Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review

2. Fictionality in New Materialism: (Re)Inventing Matter

   Skiveren, Tobias, 2022, In: Theory, Culture and Society. 39, 3, 16 p.

   Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review

3. Published

   New Materialism and the Eco-Marxist Challenge: Ontological Shadowboxing in the Environmental Humanities

   Skiveren, Tobias, Jul 2023, In: Environmental Humanities. 15, 3

   Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review

4. Accepted/In press

   The Doxa of Dignity: Dying Well with Susan Sontag and Maria Gerhardt

   Skiveren, Tobias, 2024, (Accepted/In press) In: Literature and Medicine. 42, 2

   Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review