Lena Karlström came to the department in 1993, leaving Stockholm where she combined teaching with freelance travel journalism. She taught the Swedish language courses and Scandinavian literature courses at UBC until April 2025. Some courses she created include Scandinavian Crime Fiction (NORD 336), Scandinavian Cinema (NORD 337) and Scandinavian Contemporary Fiction and Film (NORD 332B).

In addition, she has taught workshops on music and lyrics in language teaching at UBC, and Swedish at the Swedish Institute’s summer courses for international students. She has also organized a number of conferences, both at UBC and at the Swedish Embassy in Washington, D.C., on Swedish Fiction and Film with specially invited authors, directors and scholars.

Lena Karlström has a special interest in literature and translation. She wrote about the Swedish poet Tranströmer in her thesis Världsomseglarklanger: en komparativ studie i engelska översättningar av Tomas Tranströmers dikter (Circumnavigation Sounds: a Comparative Study of English Translations of Tomas Tranströmer’s poems) and has worked on translations of the Swedish writer Richard Swartz and contemporary Jewish writers in Sweden.

In the last few years, Lena Karlström has presented papers on contemporary Swedish migrant literature and film at a number of conferences.

Migration literature and contemporary Scandinavian fiction and film

UBC Killam Teaching Prize (2010)