Jana Rüegg

Short presentation

PhD in literature at The Section for the Sociology of Literature.

I am involved in a VR-funded projects starting in 2026: Worth and Wonder, on the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.

In December 2023, I defended my PhD thesis, Publishing Translations. Flows, Patterns, and Power-Dynamics in the Swedish Book Market after 1970.

In June-July 2025, I was a guest researcher at the Department of Book and Reading Studies at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz.

Keywords

• publishing studies
• translations
• children's literature
• world literature
• book market
• digital humanities

Biography

Networks

Member of SNÖ, Swedish Network for Translation Studies, since 2017.

Research

Worth and Wonder. Exploring Aesthetic and Pedagogical Values of Children’s Literature through the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award

(VR, 2026–2029)

The project examines how values attributed to children’s literature are created, negotiated, and put into practice through the first comprehensive study of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. To this end, the study investigates three key contexts: ALMA’s cultural policy work and communication, the laureates’ public communication on their art, and ALMA-themed reading projects in schools.

By combining research in children’s literature, sociology of literature, prize studies, and literary didactics, the project offers a children’s literature–specific perspective on literary value negotiations.

Participating researchers are Malin Nauwerck (Swedish Institute for Children’s Literature), Tuva Haglund (Swedish Institute for Children’s Literature/Uppsala University), and Jana Rüegg (Uppsala University).

Gösta Knutsson's Pelle No-Tail (Pelle Svanslös) 

I am currently researching Gösta Knutsson's Pelle Svanslös stories from inter- and transmedial perspecitves as part of the Bernadotte Programme 2025. The focus lies on a tranformative time in the Swedish children's culture 1939-1951.

Commercial Intimacies, Influencer Culture and Digital Capital in the Contemporary Book Market

In the pilotproject Lisa Grahn and I investigate the connections between the Swedish book market, digital spheres, and influencer culture.

Publishing Translation: Flows, Patterns, and Power-Dynamics in the Swedish Book Market after 1970 (diss.)

My PhD dissertation is divided into two studies.

The first study, Nobelbanor (2021) [Nobel Trajectories] examines the Swedish publishing of translated high prestige fiction via data on the works by Nobel Prize laureates in literature. By using a statistical and bibliometric methodology, all printed editions in Swedish translation (almost 1,300 editions) by the Nobel Prize laureates in literature 1970–2016 have been collected and studied. Theoretical approaches have been inspired by Pierre Bourdieu, Pascale Casanova, and David Damrosch. It takes in average 20 years from the writer’s first published edition in Swedish translation until the writer is awarded the Nobel Prize. This means that the Nobel Prize in many cases reintroduces writers that otherwise may have been forgotten by the Swedish market. The notion of attention economy describes the mechanisms activated by the Nobel Prize, where attention creates more attention and leads to the reprint of backlist editions.

The publishing trajectories of the 45 selected Nobel Prize laureates highlight general patterns in the Swedish book market, i.e. that small publishing houses have become increasingly more important for translated high prestige literature, and the diminishing importance of medium-sized publishers. Many small publishing firms were founded after 1975, as a result of the state financial subsidy for ‘translated and valuable fiction’, and yet they introduced the largest number of future laureates in the 1980s. Large publishing houses have been important for the introduction and overall publishing of the laureates, although their publishing decisions appear to be more connected to guarantees of attention and prestige during the later decades of the study (mostly the 2010s) than the earlier. This study investigates a half century of the Swedish book market where many changes occured, highlighting structural changes in publishing practices and showing the importance of cultural transmitters, e.g. publishers and translators, for high prestige literature in translation.

The second study, Förmedla och förlägga (2023), examines the publication of prose fiction translated from French, German, and Spanish into Swedish. Using a statistical and bibliometric methodology, all print editions in Swedish translation (almost 4,200 editions) published between 1970 and 2016 have been collected and studied. Theoretical approaches have been inspired by Pierre Bourdieu, Pascale Casanova, Johan Heilbron, and Gisèle Sapiro.

French and German held important positions in the Swedish book market in the 1800s and early 1900s. In the 1970s there was a shift, where Swedish originals were published in larger extent than translations. As Swedish originals have increased, trans-lations from French and German have become fewer. Spanish as a source language has historically had a peripheral position in the Swedish book market. It was not until the 1970s and 1980s, with Nobel laureates such as Gabriel García Márquez and the bestsel-ling author Isabel Allende, that Spanish was established as a source language in the Swe-dish book market.

Between 1970 and 2016, translations migrated from large to small publishing houses. This was especially true for translations from French and German. The number of translations also decreased. Small publishing houses became increasingly important, while medium-size publishing houses lost their importance for translations from the three source languages.

Male authors from the three source languages were published more frequently than female authors, which relates to the high number of classics and high-prestige lit-erature published in the period. Small publishing houses made a significant contribution to the publication of female authors from the three languages, especially after 2005.

General patterns in the Swedish book market are discussed on the basis of the dataset, including the importance of the state subsidy for translated fiction and the im-pact of financial crises on the publishing world.