I am a professor and researcher at the Department of History. My research has primarily focused on Nordic Catholic cultural history in the 19th and 20th centuries. I have participated in several research collaborations and led the two interdisciplinary research projects The Female Monastic Movement in Scandinavia: A Female Counter-Culture in Modern Society and Christian Masculinity – A Paradox of Modernity: Men and Religion in a Northern European Context, with the results presented in anthologies, journal articles, and several monographs. Furthermore, I have been engaged in research networks on anti-Catholicism, anti-clericalism, and religious criticism from a transnational perspective, as well as on early modern suicide discourses, Enlightenment and religion, and the relationship between religion and materiality.

In my dissertation, I studied Swedish-German trade relations around 1900, and I have also analyzed the handling of suicide in the early modern period from a mentality historical perspective. However, my research is primarily dealing with the re-establishment of the Catholic Church in the Nordic countries during the 19th and 20th centuries and on Nordic Catholicism, with a focus on (counter)culture, identity, gender, and mission. Based on mission reports from Catholic priests and nuns, I have examined the Catholic mission in the Nordic countries and analyzed Catholic conversions using various conversion narratives as a starting point. Until the ecumenical opening in the 1960s, Catholic activities in the Nordic countries were focused on mission, with the aim of building a Catholic ‘milieu’ with churches, associations, schools, and hospitals. Most of the Catholic priests and nuns working in the Nordic countries came from Catholic Europe, while the Catholic congregations they established mainly consisted of Nordic converts.

In several works, I have highlighted the contributions of Catholic nuns to this mission work and illustrated how female consecrated life can be seen as an alternative emancipation strategy. Further, I have studied Catholicism and masculinity, taking my starting point in theories on feminisation, masculinisation and confessionalisation of Christianity. I have also examined anti-Catholicism and religious criticism from a transnational perspective, as well as the Enlightenment and religion with a focus on Gustav III's catholicizing church policy.