EXECUTIVE COUNCIL ORGANIZATION

The Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study is a membership organization with over 500 members worldwide – ranging from graduate students and faculty to institutions and organizations with an interest in promoting Scandinavian Studies. The chart below outlines the organizational structure of SASS. For more details about each position and how you can become part of the SASS leadership team, click on the box. 

OFFICERS

The SASS Executive Council is headed by four Executive Officers. Click on the titles below to learn more about these positions and our current representatives.

PRESIDENT

The President serves a two year term in which they function as the Chief Academic Officer of the Society. The President provides academic leadership to the society as well as providing oversight over the society’s fundraising activities and acting as the liason between SASS leadership and the conference organizing committees. Immediately following their two year term, the President transitions into the role of Financial Officer. 

Olivia Noble Gunn

Olivia Noble Gunn is Associate Professor of Scandinavian Studies and the Sverre Arestad Endowed Chair in Norwegian Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her research focuses on Norwegian literature and culture since 1880, with particular interests in comparative literature, performance studies, feminism, critical race studies, and queer theory. Her publications examine Henrik Ibsen’s drama and representations of childhood, family, class, gender, and race in Norwegian literature and film. She also works as a literary translator. As President of SASS, Gunn is committed to improving accessibility, fostering an inclusive scholarly community, and exploring new opportunities for intellectual exchange and collaboration.

VICE PRESIDENT

 

SASS members elect a Vice President in alternating years. The VP serves a two year term in which they function as the Chief Operating Officer of the Society, overseeing the awards and prizes committees, and serving as the chair of the Birgit Baldwin Fellowship committee. Immediately following their two year term, the Vice President transitions into the role of President. 

 

Natalie Van Deusen

Natalie Van Deusen holds the Henry Cabot and Linnea Lodge Professorship in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Alberta. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2012 and specializes in Old Norse and Early Modern Icelandic literature, particularly paleography, philology, hagiography, and gender studies. Her research explores female saints in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, with particular attention to gender and disability in medieval Nordic society. She is Editor-in-Chief of Scandinavian-Canadian Studies and a past president of the Association for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies in Canada. As SASS Vice President, she advocates for accessibility and international scholarly collaboration.

FINANCIAL OFFICER

The Financial Officer serves a two-year term in which they function as the Chief Financial Officer of the Society. The Financial Officer oversees the work of the Executive Director as regards the banking and investment interests of the society. In addition, the financial officer chairs the audit committee. 

Scott Mellor

Scott A. Mellor is Teaching Professor of Nordic Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he has taught since 1999. His research focuses on medieval Scandinavian literature, folklore, oral traditions, and cultural history. He is the author of Analyzing Ten Poems from the Poetic Edda and has published on Saint Ansgar, Scandinavian ballads, and Hans Christian Andersen. His current research explores the folk culture and traditions of the Åland Islands. A past president of the Association of Swedish Teachers and Researchers in America (ASTRA), Mellor served as SASS President from 2023 to 2025. He received UW–Madison’s Chancellor’s Hilldale Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2025.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

The Executive Director is the only full-time SASS employee. They function as the Chief Executive Officer of the Society, overseeing the day-to-day operations of the organization, including financial oversight, managing membership, and all internal and outward-facing communication. The Executive Director is responsible for ensuring that the Society follows all applicable government regulations for non-profit organizations, as well as the regulations and by-laws set out in the SASS Constitution. 

KIMBERLY LA PALM

Kimberly La Palm is Executive Director of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study and Advancement Officer at the Swenson Swedish American Research Center at Augustana College. She holds a PhD and MA in Scandinavian Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a BA in Theatre and Drama and Scandinavian Studies from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She has taught Scandinavian literature, culture, and language at UCLA, Augustana College, the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, and Viterbo University. Her professional work combines academic administration, nonprofit leadership, scholarly programming, and the promotion of Scandinavian studies in North America.

LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

The Executive Council is made up of ten members, representing the fields of Languages and Literature, History and Social Sciences, and Institutional/Independent and Graduate Student Members. Graduate Student Representatives serve a two year term while the others  serve a four-year term, with at least two new members rotating in at the end of the annual conference. During their term on the council, members fullfill the role of a board of directors. They serve on committees, propose new initiatives, and vote on proposals concerning the management of the society. The Executive Council meets virtually twice a year in January and September, and in person at the annual meeting in May.

4TH YEAR REPRESENTATIVE

Kate Heslop

Kate is an Assistant Professor in the Scandinavian Department at the University of California, Berkeley. She grew up in New Zealand and received her doctorate from the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on Old Norse topics, with special interests in poetic materiality and mediality, memory studies, and the senses. Her monograph "Viking Mediologies" is forthcoming with Fordham in 2021.

3RD YEAR REPRESENTATIVE

Amanda Doxtater

Amanda Doxtater is the Barbro Osher Endowed Chair of Swedish Studies in the University of Washington Department of Scandinavian Studies. Her research interests include: film melodrama, Nordic art cinema, performance and translation studies, design-thinking, and public-facing scholarship in the humanities.

2ND YEAR REPRESENTATIVE

Liina-Ly Roos

Liina-Ly Roos is Assistant Professor in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She specializes in Nordic and Baltic cinema, television, literary and cultural studies. Her research interests include hierarchies of migration; figurations of the child; memory studies; public broadcasting and film theory. Roos has published on imagining the post-Soviet trauma in Nordic cinema in Baltic Screen Media Review (2014) and her chapter on melodrama, childhood and Nordic cultural memory of war is forthcoming in Nordic War Stories (ed. Marianne Stecher).

1ST YEAR REPRESENTATIVE

Rosemary Erickson Johnsen

Rosemary Erickson Johnsen, Ph.D. is Associate Provost and Associate VP of Academic Affairs at Governors State University, near Chicago. Also a professor of English, she publishes in the areas of crime fiction and public humanities, including Contemporary Feminist Historical Crime Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan). She is co-editor of a forthcoming essay collection on Public Scholarship in Literary Studies (Amherst College Press, 2021), and a recent recipient of 2 NEH grants. A regular presenter at SASS conferences and book reviewer for Scandinavian Studies, she has published essays on Swedish crime fiction in the Los Angeles Review of Books and other public-facing outlets. She is also on the editorial board of the Journal of Popular Culture. Her vision for service to SASS includes promoting public humanities engagement among individual members and for SASS as a whole. External collaborations and relationships will enhance the reach and stability of SASS. (www.rosemaryj.com)

HISTORY AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

The Executive Council is made up of ten members, representing the fields of Languages and Literature, History and Social Sciences, and Institutional/Independent and Graduate Student Members. Graduate Student Representatives serve a two year term while the others  serve a four-year term, with at least two new members rotating in at the end of the annual conference. During their term on the council, members fullfill the role of a board of directors. They serve on committees, propose new initiatives, and vote on proposals concerning the management of the society. The Executive Council meets virtually twice a year in January and September, and in person at the annual meeting in May.

4TH YEAR REPRESENTATIVE

3RD YEAR REPRESENTATIVE

Anna Rue

Anna Rue is Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A graduate of UW-Madison’s Scandinavian Studies PhD program, Rue researched Norwegian-American folklife with an emphasis on folk music. She continues this work through the Sustaining Scandinavian Folk Art in the Upper Midwest project, an interdisciplinary project involving instruction, public outreach, public events, and fieldwork collection throughout the Upper Midwest.

2ND YEAR REPRESENTATIVE

Verena Höfig

Verena Höfig (PhD '14 Berkeley, SASS member since ’08) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Her research focuses on the intersection of literature, material culture, and social history in Scandinavia from the Viking Age until today. Recent publications include articles on healing practices in the pre-Christian North, and on radical Neopaganism and the alt-right in the United States. Her first book (under contract) focuses on nationalism in Iceland. She teaches courses on Old Norse-Icelandic language and the sagas, Norse mythology, and modern Swedish language and culture.

1ST YEAR REPRESENTATIVE

Tim Frandy

Bures! Frandy is an Assistant Professor of Folklore Studies at Western Kentucky University, where his research involves Nordic and Nordic American folklore (mostly Sámi and Finnish), Indigenous peoples, and public humanities. He is serving on the Executive Council to advocate for two issues that are dear to him. The first involves elevating diversity in our field: in our membership, the Nordic communities we work with, and the kinds of scholarship we do. The second concerns supporting graduate students and younger scholars facing historic economic challenges. The future of our field depends on our investment in these two issues.

INDEPENDENT & GRAD STUDENTS

The Executive Council is made up of ten members, representing the fields of Languages and Literature, History and Social Sciences, and Institutional/Independent and Graduate Student Members. Graduate Student Representatives serve a two year term while the others  serve a four-year term, with at least two new members rotating in at the end of the annual conference. During their term on the council, members fullfill the role of a board of directors. They serve on committees, propose new initiatives, and vote on proposals concerning the management of the society. The Executive Council meets virtually twice a year in January and September, and in person at the annual meeting in May.

INSTITUTIONAL/INDEPENDENT REPRESENTATIVE

SALLY YERKOVICH

Yerkovich is Director of Educational Exchange and Special Projects at The American-Scandinavian Foundation and Adjunct Professor of Museum Anthropology at Columbia University. A cultural anthropologist with more than thirty years of leadership experience in museums and cultural institutions in New York and Washington, DC, she now serves as the Chair of the Ethics Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM). She is the author of A Practical Guide to Museum Ethics as well as numerous articles on ethical issues. Yerkovich would bring to the SASS Executive Council the perspective of an independent scholar working in the non-profit sector.

GRADUATE STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE

MAXINE SAVAGE

Maxine Savage is a doctoral student in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington. As a graduate student member of SASS’s executive council, their focus would be on recruiting and supporting a diverse graduate student presence in the field. Maxine’s research explores national identity, queer history, racialized affect, and materiality in contemporary Icelandic literature and cinema. Their scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in lambda nordica, PARSE journal, Ós, seedings and elsewhere. Supported by the Fulbright Commission and the American-Scandinavian Foundation, Maxine’s work has included collaborations with the Northwest Film Forum, Taste of Iceland, and The Poetry Brothel Reykjavík.

STANDING COMMITTEES

Aurora Borealis Committee

Birgit Baldwin Fellowship Selection Committee

Haugen Fellowship Selection Committee

Audit Committee

Professional Behavior Committee

CURRENT AD HOC COMMITTEES

Policies and Procedures

Strategic Planning

Communication

Journal Business