Lena Rydholm elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters
Lena Rydholm, professor of Chinese at Uppsala University’s Department of Linguistics and Philology, has been elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters as a working member in the philosophical and philological class. Her research has largely been devoted to Chinese literature.
Born in 1963, Lena Rydholm defended her dissertation In Search of the Generic Identity of Ci Poetry at Stockholm University in 1998. She was appointed associate professor of sinology at Stockholm University in 2010 and has been professor of Chinese at Uppsala University’s Department of Linguistics and Philology since 2012.
As a researcher, her primary focus has been on Chinese literature, most importantly classical Chinese poetry. Her dissertation and her study of the poet Li Qingzhao (1084-ca.1151) have garnered considerable global attention and respect among specialists on ci poetry. In her research, Professor Rydholm has also studied several other aspects of Chinese literature, both classical and modern.
Lena Rydholm has, and continues to, participate in a number of significant projects addressing literature and history from a global perspective. Between 1998 and 2006 she participated in the research programme Literature and Literary History in a Global Context and between 2008 and 2014 in the project Global History. Since 2014, she has been part of the project Cosmopolitan and Vernacular Dynamics in World Literature.
“In this project she has provided a weighty contribution regarding various aspects of Chinese literature, thereby contributing to a deeper understanding of Chinese literature from a global perspective. She worked for many years on the project Media and Globalization in Contemporary China, devoting herself to a greater knowledge of the Chinese mediascape,” writes the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters on its website, concluding: “Lena Rydholm’s depth and breadth of knowledge regarding Chinese culture will be a great asset to the Academy.
Annica Hulth