معرفی
Lena Ahlin is a Senior Lecturer in English at Kristianstad University's Faculty of Teacher Education, Department of Subject Teacher Education, where she has worked since 2004. She is affiliated with the Learning in Language and Literature (LiLL) research group and serves as the Subject representative for English. Her academic work spans both literary research and pedagogical studies, with a focus on American minority literature and writing instruction.
Dr. Ahlin earned her Phil. Dr. from Lund University in 2004, with a thesis examining representations of Europe in Harlem Renaissance writers' works. Her research primarily explores American minority literature, addressing themes of racialization, in-betweenness, nostalgia, and collective memory. She has published extensively on Japanese-American internment during World War II and memory in contemporary adoption memoirs. Her collaborative work with Maria Freij resulted in a book on transnational adoption memoirs, accepted for publication by Palgrave Macmillan/Springer in early 2026.
Her recent publications reveal a strong focus on transnational adoption narratives, with particular attention to how these memoirs engage with conventional autobiographical tropes. Alongside her literary research, she maintains an active interest in writing pedagogy, examining teacher-led feedback, peer review processes, and writing's relationship to critical thinking. Her work demonstrates consistent engagement with both theoretical literary analysis and practical educational applications.
Dr. Ahlin participates actively in academic service, serving as editor for Genealogy journal and conducting peer reviews for Barnboken. She has presented her research on transnational adoption memoirs at invited talks and has been involved in organizing conferences related to literature didactics.
Her current projects include 'Skriv för och med unga' (Write for and with young people), a collaborative effort with researchers from Linnaeus University and Jönköping University examining creative writing in schools, and 'Möjliga och omöjliga världar' (Possible and impossible worlds), which explored fiction as a community-building activity for distance students. She is also a member of the Childhood Research in Literature, Language and Learning network.
