lambda nordica proudly presents our new editors-in-chief

2020-10-23

We are excited to introduce the new editors-in-chief of lambda nordica, Erika Alm and Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen, who from no 2/2020 are in charge of the content of the journal. They are already familiar to many who follow Nordic LGBTQ studies, and have both been contributors to the journal as well as members of the editorial board. To allow for the readers to get to know them better, we asked them to tell us a little about themselves and their visions for lambda nordica

 

Who are you and what do you bring to lambda nordica?

Erika: I usually introduce myself as an academic chameleon, my academic schooling is in History of Ideas – which is a discipline that only exists, as a distinct discipline, in the Nordic region – but I am firmly situated in feminist, queer and trans theory and as such in Gender Studies. My primary research interests revolve around the yearning to understand how discourses on gender, sex and identity are formed in the biopolitics of gender and sex non conforming behaviours and people. I am particularly interested in the conflictual relation between on the one hand medical and juridical knowledge production on trans and intersex, and on the other hand trans and intersex organizing and lived experience, and how this violent tension informs and conditions knowledge production and living conditions. These questions have oriented me since my undergraduate studies and have introduced me to the diverse field of intersex and trans studies, and to brilliant scholars and activists.

Elisabeth: My formal training is in social anthropology, gender studies and Chinese studies, and in my current position as associate professor I am based in a gender studies centre. I am Norwegian but with an international orientation in my life and work as I spent many years abroad, before I returned to Norway in 2015. My main interests concern, briefly, transnational gender and sexual diversities, critical approaches to methodology and the politics of knowledge production and dissemination, including writing and publishing in the academy today, and ethnographic approaches to documenting and analyzing variegated forms of inequalities and radical strategies for imagining life and existences otherwise. My ethnographic locations of interest are principally China (PRC) and, more recently, Nordic Europe.

 

What are your visions and plans for lambda nordica? 

Our principal aim is to continue developing on former editors Ulrika Dahl’s and Jenny Björklund’s solid legacy of bringing lambda nordica to an established position as a high-quality, regionally based journal, as well as introduce some specific perspectives that stem from our respective academic trajectories and interests.

Overall, we find it important to continue the work of defining and putting into practice what a Nordic location - geographically, linguistically and research-wise - could mean and do for a journal like lambda nordica. On one level, we are especially interested in using our editorship to figure out the extent to which Nordic particularity, in terms of scholars’ theoretical and methodological approaches, could offer meaningful alternatives and challenges to the Anglo-US hegemony in queer studies in a way that doesn’t fetishize empiricism. On another but related level, we have already implemented some changes to ensure that the editorial team reflects a range of Nordic locations beyond Sweden, as we have revised the composition of the editorial board this summer. With this as a starting point, we are striving to diversify the practical work of running and editing a journal, from locating and inviting manuscripts and special issues, to ensuring plurality in peer-review requests, citational practices, books and theses for review, and to suggest special issue topics and editorial commentaries that are relevant to and invite broad interest across the Nordic region and globally. As editors coming from history of ideas and anthropology respectively, and aided by the interdisciplinary competence of the new editorial board members, we bring new and different networks and collaborative ideas to the table that we believe will help us realize our ambitions in the years to come.

Our firm ambition is to facilitate for lambda to continue to grow as an alternative and desirable publishing platform for queer studies scholars globally, despite – or maybe because – of being a small, independent, open-access, multi-language scholarly journal. We believe this is especially important in the context of the current political landscape of pandemics, climate change and anti-democratic challenges, the ongoing corporatization of academic and academic career trajectories and inhumane definitions of scholarly and scholar ‘value’. In sum, we intend to continue to develop lambda nordica as a platform for independent publishing, and to queerly develop the generative and collaborative potentials of this position.