I am a teacher and researcher in German-language literature. My research is mainly focused on literary representations of social inequality and housing issues in cities, as well as on the role and function of literary discourses in social processes. I am also interested in narrative structures of representations of urban life. In my current transdisciplinary research project "Paths, boundaries, nodes: Urban and literary forms in German-language narratives of homelessness" (funded by the Åke Wiberg Foundation 2025–2028), I investigate how the constitution of urban space influences the subjective and existential experience of homelessness in cities such as Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Vienna and Zürich as represented and imagined in literature. My previous research has also focused on literary representations of different forms of housing (large-scale housing projects, communal living) and resistance to urban change in fiction and non-fiction.

In my dissertation, defended in December 2020 at Uppsala University, I examined contemporary German-language literature's response to the large-scale gentrification that has profoundly altered Berlin's social and urban structures after the German reunification. The dissertation was awarded the Westin Prize (website in Swedish) in 2022. In my one-year postdoc project "Moral and the Metropolis: Social Types and Figures in Berlin and Vienna 1890–1914" (funded by the Sven and Dagmar Salén Foundation), I was affiliated with the Department of German Studies at the University of Vienna 2021–2022. The focus of this research lies on social aspects of modernist urban life as well as contacts between the Swedish- and German-speaking cultural spheres.

I take an interest in how my research can be connected to didactic issues and have co-edited a volume on language didactics (in Swedish). I teach German-language literature from various periods with a special focus on the long 20th century. I am also a board member of the network for German-language literary studies in Sweden, GLS (website in Swedish and German), that aims to spread research on German-language literature to a wider audience within and outside academia. Since 2016, I have been an active contributor to conferences and collaborations within the international research network Association for Literary Urban Studies (ALUS).

My reserarch interests include aspects of

• urbanity and housing in literature
• modernist and contemporary literature
• German- and Swedish-language cultural contacts
• narratology, especially genre and character theory
• literature and language didactics

Publications

Henryson, Hanna: "Stadt lesen – Stadt schreiben: Literatur- und fremdsprachendidaktische Perspektiven auf Stadtromane aus der Weimarer Republik". In: HumaNetten, special issue "Sprachliche Begegnungen – Beiträge zur 15. Arbeitstagung schwedischer Germanistinnen und Germanisten Text im Kontext in Växjö am 19.–20. April 2024" (eds. Maria Håkansson Ramberg, Corina Löwe & Bärbel Westphal), 56, 2025, pp. 59–88. Open access

Henryson, Hanna: "Momentaufnahme 2023: Betrug und Wahrheit in Hanna Nordenhöks Underlandet". In: Neues Lesen Skandinavien: Rezensionen, 3 April 2025. Open access

Henryson, Hanna: 'Staden i boken: Materialitet och form i Irina Liebmanns dokumentariska stadsskildringar'. In: Tidskrift för Litteraturvetenskap, special issue 'Litteratur och materialitet' (eds. Sara Pärsson & Ellen Frödin), 32(2–3), 2024. Open access

Henryson, Hanna & Sulimma, Maria: "'Nothing was solved, only accelerated': Contemporary Berlin Novels as Gentrifictions". In: Narrative Journal, 32(1), 2024, pp. 60–79. More information

Henryson, Hanna: "Forschender Fußgänger, wandernder Wallraff: Raum und Bewegung in der Wiener Sozialreportage um 1900". In: Bewegungen: Beiträge zur 14. Arbeitstagung schwedischer Germanistinnen und Germanisten Text im Kontext in
Lund am 21. - 23. April 2022 (eds. J. Alexander Bareis, Henrik Henriksson & Mikael Nystrand), Lund: Lunder germanistische Forschungen 75, pp. 51–66. Open access

Henryson, Hanna: 'Gentrifiktioner: En undersökning av sociourbana förändringsprocesser i Berlinromaner från 2000-talet'. In: Kungl. Humanistiska Vetenskaps-Samfundet i Uppsala: Årsbok 2022-2023 (ed. Merja Kytö), Uppsala: Kungl. Humanistiska Vetenskaps-Samfundet i Uppsala, 2024, pp. 71–89.

Henryson, Hanna: 'Die Endlichkeit des Seins: Malte Perssons Untergangslyrik'. In: Neues Lesen Skandinavien: Rezensionen, 6 July 2023. Open access

Henryson, Hanna & Knittle, Davy: 'Representing a Long Emergency: New Approaches to Urban Change in Literary and Cultural Studies'. In: Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, special issue 'Representing Urban Change Beyond Gentrification' (eds. Henryson & Knittle), 10(1), 2023, pp. 15–30. Open access

Henryson, Hanna: '"Community is the one true capital": Ideologies of urban self-build groups in Anke Stelling’s Berlin novels'. In: Forum for Modern Language Studies, special issue 'Urban Utopics' (eds. Michael Kelly & Mariano Paz), 59(1), 2023, pp. 39–55. Open access

Henryson, Hanna: 'Tipping Points: Gentrification and Urban Possibility'. In: Salmela, Markku, Ameel, Lieven & Finch, Jason (eds.): Literatures of Urban Possibility. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, pp. 165–189. More information

Henryson, Hanna: Gentrifiktionen. Zur Gentrifizierung in deutschsprachigen Berlin-Romanen nach 2000. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Publishing, 2021. Open access

Henryson, Hanna: '"Kuvertcirkeln": Resultat av aktiverande språkundervisning på högskolenivå'. In: Tornberg, Ulrika, Thegel, Miriam & Henryson, Hanna (eds.): Språkdidaktik i praktiken. Metoder, exempel och reflektioner från högskolenivå. Uppsala: Skrifter utgivna av Institutionen för nordiska språk 103, Uppsala universitet, 2020, pp. 15–32. Open access

Tornberg, Ulrika, Thegel, Miriam & Henryson, Hanna: 'Det språkdidaktiska kunskapsområdet: en introduktion'. In: Tornberg, Ulrika, Thegel, Miriam & Henryson, Hanna (eds.): Språkdidaktik i praktiken. Metoder, exempel och reflektioner från högskolenivå. Uppsala: Skrifter utgivna av Institutionen för nordiska språk 103, Uppsala universitet, 2020, pp. 7–14. Open access