Professor Karl Erik Schøllhammer holds an MA in Nordic Literature and a PhD in Semiotics and Latin American Literature from Aarhus University (Denmark). He has taught at the Aarhus University, at the Federal University of Brasília, and has been Obel Guest Professor at the Aalborg University, Denmark. He is professor at the Pontifície Universidade Católica in Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) at the Department of Language and Literature where he teaches comparative literature, Brazilian literature, arts and culture, and literary theory.

As a researcher he is supported by the Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa (CNPq) and by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES). He has received the prestigious premium stipend Cientista do Nosso Estado (Faperj) on give occasions. He has published extensively on contemporary Brazilian literature and culture and translated Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish authors into Portuguese.

Research

• Modern and contemporary Brazilian and Latin American literature;
• Crime and violence, cultures and representation;
• World literature and beyond;
• Travel, migration and displacement;
• Literature and other arts in Latin America;
• Contemporary aesthetics and politics;
• Traumatic and affective realism.

Karl's current research is focused on 'Citizenship and Spatial Identity in Challenged Urban Communities - Memory, Imagination, and Cultural Work in Contemporary Brazil'. As part of an interdisciplinary approach to civic self-recognition of urban, social, and cultural issues in Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro, this project investigates the cultural work of literary and in a broad sense artistic production in and about the community. It studies how these literary, artistic, and cultural products and events become part of the constitution of a territorial and political identity.

Through the application of a geo-referential information system (GIS) in the research of literary and artistic representations and expressions, the project has the ambition to convert aesthetic and literary analyses into an interactive tool in a collaboration between academia and socially challenged populations.