Rate My Professor Peter Simonsen

Peter Simonsen is Professor of European Literature in the Department of Culture and Language, Faculty of Humanities, at the University of Southern Denmark. He holds a PhD from the University of Copenhagen, awarded in 2003 for a dissertation on William Wordsworth directed by Professor Charls Lock, following graduate studies in the English Department there from 1999 to 2002. He also studied English and Comparative Literature at the University of Odense from 1992 to 1998, and was an exchange student at Ohio University from 1995 to 1996. His career trajectory includes Reader in the English Department at the University of Copenhagen (2003-2004), Carlsberg Research Fellow at SDU (2004-2007), Assistant Professor at SDU (2007-2009), Associate Professor of English Language Literature at SDU (2009-2014), and Professor since 2014. Simonsen has held significant leadership positions, including Head of the research programme in Welfare Narratives (2011-2016), Head of the Research Group in Uses of Art and Literature (2016-2022), Manager of the Center for Uses of Literature (2020-present, co-managed 2022-2023 with Dr. Emily Hogg), and Professor at the Research Center for Culture and Older People, COPe (Vulnerability). He served on the PhD Board for the Humanities at SDU from 2011 to 2020 and leads the Humanities Unit of CPop, focusing on literature's role in mediating ageing.

Simonsen's research explores how literature shapes the world through acts of reading by ordinary readers, using interdisciplinary methods including empirical approaches. His specializations include literary gerontology and ageing studies (novels on retirement and menopause, lyric gerontology), literature's relations to the welfare state in Denmark and the UK (ageing, precariat experiences), Health Humanities and Narrative Medicine (shared reading impacts on retirement transitions and dementia), and British Romanticism (Wordsworth, ekphrasis, book culture, third-generation poets). Key publications encompass recent works such as 'Approaching Literary Connectivity: Early Reflections on a Shared Reading Intervention in the Light of Postcritical Thought' (2024, Orbis Literarum, with M.-E. Pihl et al.), ''You come as a human being…': exploring sense of equality in arts interventions' (2025, Medical Humanities, with M.M. Kristensen et al.), and 'Enhancing ethical self-efficacy among dementia caregiver staff' (2025, International Journal of Nursing Studies Advances, with S. Lauridsen et al.). He has produced 114 research outputs, including three monographs and editorships. Awards include Syddansk Universitets Innovationspris (2023, shared), Innovationsprisen SDU for Narrative Medicine teaching development (2023), and Dembo Prize (2021, shared). Simonsen has delivered 132 talks and presentations, edited research journals, and contributed to committees and boards.