Forskning

I am a professor at the Department of Arts and Communication.

Since August 2022 I have also served as Head of the PhD school for the Department.

Research projects

During the previous four years, I have been PI (research leader) for a large project, “New Stories of Same-Sex Relations 1870–2020,” popularly called “Queer Women* 1870–2020.” The project is funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF) and runs from 2022–2027. The project writes new LGBTQ+ history by focusing on women* (including individuals who may identify as nonbinary or transgender, had they lived today) because while men’s sexual relations were criminalized, sex between women has never been illegal in Denmark. Through extensive archival work I have located letters, diaries, personal ads, photographs, police reports, and hospital records that tell countless exciting personal stories, revealing new aspects of Danish history, especially in relation to gender and sexuality.

From 2015–2018, I was PI (research leader) on a large project called “New Media — New Intimacies.” It is a Sapere Aude project funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF). The project investigates how personal relationships, identities, and intimacies (such as reproduction, sex, love, and partnerships) take new forms, change, and develop through social media. It threw light on major changes in our everyday lives and our relations to others that occur when we increasingly live intimate lives on social media and when social media increasingly help us find and understand intimate relationships and possibilities.

Research areas 

My research has covered a wide range of topics: history, media, communication, gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, whiteness, history, archives, nationality, power, discrimination, popular culture, assisted reproduction. I work with and within feminist theory and method, gender studies, postcolonialism, decoloniality, queer studies, affect theory, critical data studies / critical algorithm studies, critical race and whiteness studies, racism / anti-racist research, critical archival studies, history.

I have been (critically) engaged with the rise of datafication. From 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2021, I co-led the Nordic network “Datafication, Data Inequalities and Data Justice” together with Kaarina Nikunen from Finland and Anne Kaun from Sweden. It was a Nordic Exploratory Research Network (NOS-HS) that brought together researchers across the Nordic countries. We have been (and are) focused on examining DAI, datafication and media technologies from critical perspectives, for example inequalities (with regard to gender and social class) that follow from automated decision-making processes (commonly referred to as “artificial intelligence”/AI).

I work as a researcher, teacher, and consultant in communication with particular focus on gender, sexuality, race/whiteness. At Roskilde University, I teach and supervise courses in media/communication related to race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, minorities, majorities, and power. I also teach gender theory and supervise projects on topics such as race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, minorities, and history. I was trained as a historian, and I often use history and historical perspectives to illuminate the present.

I am affiliated with the research areas “Culture and Media” and “Time and Society.”

Publications

My recent book De nye kvinder: Kærlighed og queers 1870-1920 (Politikens forlag, 2025) is in Danish. I have previously published the books Human Exhibitions (Routledge, 2015), investigating exhibitions of “exotic” people in zoos and Tivoli around 1900, and the book Mediated Kinship: Gender, Race and Sexuality in Donor Families (Routledge, 2018), examinating the fascinating intersections of online media and new kinship by studying the increasing numbers of single women and lesbian couples reproducing by using donor sperm and connecting with each other online, as well as develop intimate digital communities and, locate their children’s hitherto unknown biological half-siblings, throughout the world.

With colleagues, I have edited The Routledge International Handbook of New Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, gathering global perspectives, theoretical development and analysis of this area.

I have edited the anthology, Mediated Intimacies: Connectivities, Relationalities and Proximities (Routledge, 2017), gathering international research on media and intimacies.

I also have numerous articles within my research areas (see my publication list).

Photo: Thomas Cato