Dr Daisy Neijmann,
Reader in Icelandic
Department of Scandinavian Studies
University College London
London
WC1E 6BT
Tel.: +44 (0)20 7679 3181 (x33181)
Fax: +44 (0)20 679 7750
E-mail: d.neijmann@ucl.ac.uk
Office location: Room 107, 17 Gordon Square
I was born in Amsterdam, but I have lived and worked in Iceland, Canada and the UK since 1988. I originally read English language and literature at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, and took Old Norse and Modern Icelandic as ancillary subjects at the UvA (Universiteit van Amsterdam). I graduated in 1988, and after a year of teaching foreign languages at the Framhaldsskólinn á Húsavík, I resumed my research in the area of Icelandic-Canadian literature and defended my dissertation in 1994. It was published in revised and expanded form in 1997 by Carleton University Press under the title The Icelandic Voice in Canadian Letters: The Contribution of Icelandic Writers to Canadian Literature.
From 1994 until 1999 I worked as Assistant Professor in Icelandic-Canadian Studies in the Department of Icelandic at the University of Manitoba. During this time, I began to conduct comprehensive research on the Icelandic-Canadian writer Laura Goodman Salverson, and started working more extensively in the areas of minority literatures in general, post-colonial studies, and nationalism and canonisation.
In 1999 I became the Halldór Laxness Lecturer in Icelandic in the Department of Scandinavian Studies at UCL. I teach courses in Modern Icelandic language, Modern Icelandic literature, and Icelandic folklore, and I contribute to courses in Nordic film and pan-Scandinavian literature with an Icelandic component. My research interests are now primarily focussed on the area of contemporary Icelandic fiction and literary historiography. Recently I have also become interested in memory in literature, and the image of Iceland in foreign fiction.
In addition, I have been involved in projects concerned with the teaching of 'small' languages and virtual language learning and teaching, including Bragi , Icelandic Online, and, currently, Languages of the Wider World CETL (the UCL - SOAS Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning).
