معرفی
Erika Sturk serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of Language Studies at Umeå University, Sweden, with additional roles as a visiting researcher at Åbo Akademi University and Karlstad University. Her work bridges language didactics, writing education, and democratic theory, focusing on how writing pedagogy shapes civic participation across educational contexts.
Her research interests emphasize writing education across all school subjects, discourses of writing in policy and practice, and democracy-writing connections. She investigates implementation challenges in writing curricula, teacher perspectives on balancing reading/writing instruction, and how social media platforms serve as professional development arenas for educators. Her approach integrates classroom interventions with systemic analysis of educational policy.
Recent publications reveal a strong trend toward writing-as-democratic-practice frameworks, examining how academic and professional writing skills empower student agency. Geographically, her work centers on Swedish compulsory education while incorporating Nordic comparative perspectives, particularly through collaborations with Finland and Denmark. Methodologically, she employs reflective observation, discourse analysis, and action research to study writing instruction.
Sturk actively supervises master's theses in teacher education programs while leading major funded initiatives: SKRIVUM (Umeå University's strategic project for academic/professional writing development), a VR/UVK-funded study on social media as professional practice arenas (2021-03948), and a Nordic network project financed by Riksbanken Jubileumsfond focused on writing didactics.
She coordinates Umeå's LITUM literacy research network and participates in steering committees for SMDI (Swedish Didactic Focus network) and SKRID (Nordic writing didactics network). These collaborative structures enable cross-institutional research on literacy development, with recent outputs including the 10-year LITUM retrospective and interventions like 'Writing as Nutrition for Democracy.'
