During the National Forum 2025, a range of special sessions will be conducted, each covering key topics. Below, you will find the session details along with important instructions for participants provided by the organisers. Please review them carefully to ensure full preparation and active participation.

The development of all-round communicative competence is the main aim for English language teaching (ELT) in the syllabi for compulsory and upper secondary school issued by Skolverket (2022a, 2022b). It includes the development of students’ proficiency and language awareness as well as their intercultural competence. To achieve this, teachers need broad instuctional repertoires. In terms of students’ English proficiency, teachers are having to strike a balance between purely meaning-based classroom activities and those that focus on form(s), often involving explicit instruction about English grammar patterns and writing conventions. Previous research suggests that many English teachers in Sweden expect students to learn English implicitly, through activities that focus on meaning rather than the language itself (e.g., Bergström et al., 2022; Schurz et al., 2022). While students in Sweden often excel in international proficiency tests, recent studies show that students graduating from upper-secondary school in Sweden are challenged by the lexical demands when reading course literature in English at university (Eriksson, 2023; Warnby, 2023). Another feature of today’s ELT in Sweden is increasing diversity in terms of students’ language repertoires and proficiency levels in English, for example as a result of students’ extensive informal language learning (see e.g., Schurz & Sundqvist, 2022). Teachers, therefore, have to consider whether their classrooms should be ‘English Only’ zones, or areas for translanguaging (see e.g., Källkvist et al., 2024). A third feature concerns students’ intercultural competence as expressed in the curriculum. To this end, English teachers can use widely available materials such as fiction, film, and digital resources to support, for example, the development of students’ empathy with others (see e.g., Bland, 2022; Hoff, 2019). Given the Swedish Education Act (SFS 2010:800) policy that education in Sweden should rest on evidence and/or best practice, we need to better understand how English may be effectively taught in Swedish schools given these unique conditions for English language learning today. To address the multifaced nature of all-round communicative competence and ways in which this can be taught, this colloquium welcomes empirical and conceptual contributions that explore different instructional options to develop students’ communicative competence in English from a variety of perspectives and educational contexts in Sweden and internationally. Presentation topics may include but are not limited to the role of explicit instruction, intentional and incidental learning, communicative language teaching and task-based language teaching, focus on form(s), target language use, translanguaging and literature-based instruction in primary, secondary and tertiary education. The colloquium opens with an invited plenary by Dr. Silvia Kunitz of Linköping University on the topic of “How can teaching develop students’ communicative competence in English?”.

Organisers: Per Wennlund (Stockholm University), Marie Källkvist (Linnæus University and Lund University), Denise Bergström (Luleå University) and Katherina Dodou (University of Oslo)

The list of references can be found here.

English emerged as an academic discipline in the eighteenth century, and its history has been closely intertwined with that of Romanticism. Romantic ideas about poetry and the self assisted in the formation of the English canon and the rise of English Literature as a cultural institution. Such ideas continued to be a dominant influence in critical discussions of literature throughout the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. However, the study of Romanticism has itself undergone many changes, from the formalist reductionism of New Criticism through the deconstructive turn of the 1970s to the historical and material turn of the 1980s. Each turn has left behind critical debates that remain entrenched in the field. New historicist critics, for example, have argued that the study of Romanticism must remain uncontaminated by Romanticism’s own terms to avoid ideological cooptation. Since then, new theoretical perspectives have been proposed and are gaining ground, but in general, the study of Romanticism remains within the new historicist paradigm. This panel seeks to address questions regarding the relevance of the study of Romanticism to our own time and circumstances. To what extent must the study of Romanticism change in order to adapt to present-day challenges? Does the future hold new avenues to the field? Should interdisciplinary perspectives be adopted? Does the teaching of Romanticism require new pedagogies or impose other requirements on teachers? The panel also welcomes contributions that approach the question of Romantic futures from the opposite side — i.e. how can Romanticism help us navigate our own futures? Contributions that approach the central question from other angles are also encouraged.  

Panel organisers: Jorunn Joiner (Lund University) and John Öwre (Lund University)

Until relatively recently, America used to be, together with Britain, one the two self-evident foci of English Studies in Swedish universities. Today, however, new perspectives and areas of interest, including world literatures in English, global Englishes, the transnational turn, and thematic or theoretically oriented content have brought into question the earlier focus on specific nations, and imperial/neo-imperial ones at that. What has this meant for those of us whose research and/or teaching specialization (used to) center around the field of American Studies broadly defined?   

This panel is interested in exploring the following questions: 

• What has been gained and what has been lost as a result of this paradigmatic shift?
• What impact has this shift had on us as researchers and teachers?
• What place/role is there for the study of American literature, culture, history and politics in the current English Studies curriculum?
• What new forms have been found to integrate knowledge about America in this ever expanding curriculum?

We invite contributions to this panel in the form of short papers/reflections (10 min), primarily focused on the teaching context, that either identify some of the problems/challenges that this shift has engendered, or present creative solutions that have resulted from it, or a combination of both.

Panel organisers: Chloé Avril (University of Gothenburg) and Jenny Bonnevier (Örebro University). The organisers are members of the Swedish Association for American Studies (SAAS), a network that aims to facilitate interdisciplinary exchange and encounters between American Studies scholars spread out across different universities and subjects in Sweden.

The changing face of doctoral education as well as the rising status of pedagogy within academia (as evidenced by the implementation of teaching quality merit systems in many Swedish universities) essentially means that the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education is becoming a required, parallel track in the academic career. In order to be competitive in the academic career market, this means that, alongside their scholarly training, doctoral students should be given the opportunity to strengthen their pedagogical profiles and develop pedagogic competences of value for future employment. More specifically, there is a need to bridge the gap between courses in higher education pedagogy and the discipline-specific and practical context that doctoral students meet as they start teaching.

We have recently carried out faculty-financed pedagogical development work that aims to provide doctoral students with more structured support in their discipline-specific pedagogical training. Further, in dialogue with doctoral students, we have developed a pedagogical mentoring model based on a scaffolded approach, enabling doctoral students to observe, discuss, practise, and learn from the range of teaching practices and philosophies that exists within the subject of English. 

In this roundtable, we present our proposed model for doctoral students’ pedagogical development, including a course-specific component where doctoral students act as co-supervisors of a BA degree project together with an experienced supervisor (15-20 minutes). After sharing our experiences and reflections, we open the floor for joint discussions and experiences of alternative formats at other universities, as well as the reasons why we believe that these plans are in line with the development of doctoral education in Sweden (40 minutes). Doctoral students who have participated in the pilot rounds of our mentoring model will be present to answer questions and share their experiences in poster format.

Roundtable organisers: Satu Manninen, Lene Nordrum, Ellen Turner, Cecilia Wadsö Lecaros (moderators), with Jorunn Joiner, Sophia Juul, Mari Komnæs, Freja Lauridsen, Elena de Wachter, and John Öwre. All from English Studies, Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University.

This workshop offers an introduction to the field of literature education in English as a second or additional language (L2). It is a response to a felt need for professional development expressed by academic English staff and documented in recent research (Dodou & Gray, 2021; Dodou & Svensson, forthcoming; Svensson & Dodou, in progress). It welcomes literary scholars, English education scholars, and other English staff who are involved in teacher education programmes or are interested in learning more about this field. The workshop addresses the following key questions: 

1. What is L2 English literature education research and what is its role in teacher education courses? We take as our starting point a recent study indicating that several literary scholars come teacher educators feel unfamiliar with L2 English literature education research and frustrated that they cannot drive the research-teaching nexus when it comes to the teaching of literature in schools (Dodou & Svensson, forthcoming). We situate research on L2 English literature education at the intersection between literary studies and English education, address the types of questions that the field investigates, and its knowledge contributions. Further, given the positive relation between educational research and teaching for teacher professionalism, we consider the role of literature education research in English courses, and we discuss the implications for pre-service teachers of various ways of engaging with this research.

2. How do literary scholars become teacher educators? This question relates to findings in a recent study focusing on the effects for academic English staff, and subsequently for future teachers, of a changed educational landscape that calls for an increased alignment between teacher education and school teaching practices (Svensson & Dodou, in progress). The findings focus on literary scholars’ experiences of becoming teacher educators and of gaining professional competence relating to the school teaching of English literature with little institutional support. Against the persistent trend over the past decade to let English literary scholars develop teacher educator competences through “trial and error” or “learning by doing”, we discuss the need for a common knowledge base around literature education and the school teaching of literature in English. 

A core aim with the workshop is to identify concrete suggestions which can ensure that future teachers of English are equipped to plan and implement the teaching of literary texts, as well as to observe, reflect upon, and improve their teaching based on knowledge from the field of L2 English literature education. Please, sign up for it to participate.

Workshop organisers: Katherina Dodou (University of Oslo) and Anette Svensson (Malmö University)

This roundtable will explore aspects of how literary studies in English within teacher training programs can contribute to the United Nations’ 2030 agenda for education for sustainable development (ESD). Questions that the table discussions will address include: How can literary studies in English contribute to a deeper understanding of sustainability issues? How can the complexity and ambiguity that characterize literature be combined with ESD? To what extent can English-language literary studies in teacher training programs help future teachers to develop the critical capacities needed to tackle complex global challenges and promote change? The aim of the roundtable is to initiate a discussion of the challenges and possibilities of addressing sustainability topics in the English subject classroom through literature.

Moderator: TBA

Participants: Celia Aijmer-Rydsjö (University West), Ulrika Andersson Hval (University West), Barbara Barrow (Lund University), Ellen Turner (Lund University), Malin Lidström Brock (Luleå University of Technology) and Marie Wallin (Luleå University of Technology)

In keeping with the theme "The Future of Literary Studies," this roundtable will investigate the theme of death and rebirth in literary studies. Such literary representations could be literal, addressing actual instances of death in texts, as well as figurative, addressing, for example, death as a metaphor for the waning of movements, theories, eras, or genres, or renewal as seen in character epiphanies and transformations, depictions of seasonal change, or poetry about rewilding. Papers could also consider the role of literary studies in relation to death and rebirth in a time of the neoliberalization of higher education and its attendant cutbacks to humanities departments, the "death of the novel," and other contemporary issues. 

Roundtable organisers: Barbara Barrow (moderator, Lund University), Monika Class (Lund University) and Elena de Wachter (Lund University)

Participants: Monika Class (Lund University), Cian Duffy (Lund University), Elena de Wachter (Lund University) and Giles Whiteley (Stockholm University)