I have taught Czech Studies at various universities in Norway, Sweden and the Czech Republic since 1999 and have extensive experience in teaching Czech language, literature, culture and history, including supervising MA theses and a PhD dissertation.

My research interests focus on Czech literature and culture, Central European cultural history, book history and the history of reading. I have published on Czech literature from the fin-de-siècle period, on literature and queer theory, on Czech homoerotic literature from the interwar period, and on literature and reception theory, especially the theories of the Prague School. 

In recent years, I have increasingly worked on issues related to book and reading culture in Czechoslovakia and Central Europe under communism, most recently with a particular interest in paper as a strategic raw material and political tool.

I am currently involved in the project De-Centering the History of Reading. The Perspective of the Czech Lands 1750-2021 (2020–2024) at the Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences with a study of Czech secondary school students’ reading journals of from the period 1948–1968. Earlier, I took part in the project READ-IT (2018–2021), which involved developing a search tool to identify and contextualise reading experiences in digitised materials from the 18th to the 21st centuries.

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Sites of Book Memory: Czech Home Libraries under the Communist Regime (1948–1989)

  2023. Jiřina Šmejkalová, Roar Lishaugen. Libraries: Culture, History, and Society 7 (1), 25-45

  Article

  The study explores the social and political role of Czech home libraries duringthe communist era (1948–1989). Analyses of qualitative data from existing oral history readingprojects and methodological impulses of memory studies serve as grounds for multipleinterpretations of this specific role. Home libraries can be considered as a counterreactionto the official propaganda and to regular purges of politically unsuitable books from publiclibraries; a reflection of building up alternatives to the centrally controlled public sphere;and perhaps even as a form of book consumers’ need for hoarding as a reaction to the shortageof desirable volumes on the state-operated book market. However, we argue that thepersistent position of Czech home libraries as the depository of social and cultural capitalcan be traced in the enduring, nearly cultic veneration of the book and reading in the Czechbook owners’ book memory.

  Read more about Sites of Book Memory

• «“La loro opera” ci insegna a guardare correttamente al nostro passato»: La lettura di massa dei classici nazionali nella Cecoslovacchia stalinista

  2023. Roar Lishaugen. Leggere in Europa, 377-389

  Chapter

  Read more about «“La loro opera” ci insegna a guardare correttamente al nostro passato»

Show all publications by Roar Lishaugen at Stockholm University