Bjorn was born in Turku, Finland where he grew up as a member of the Swedish speaking minority. He did his high school diploma at the Fenno-Swedish Katedralskolan in Turku. For university studies he went to Sweden and Uppsala where he earned a Bachelor of the Arts degree with an emphasis on Literature.
After working in a variety of places including at Uppsala University Library, he was inspired to start Ph.D. studies and applied for doctoral studies at the department for Comparative Literature in Lund. In June 2005 he successfully defended his doctoral thesis Moderskonflikten i Lars Noréns åttiotalsdramatik, later published in English as the monograph The Mother Conflict in Lars Norén´s Dramatic Works of the 1980s. A Study of Fourteen Plays by Lars Norén, at VDM Verlag, Germany. http://www.bod.de/index.php?id=296&objk_id=236804 , and the thesis later received the Stina and Erik Lundberg-scholarship awarded by the Swedish Academy.
While working at Lund University, he also served as an assistant to the Ph.D. students, dealing with different kinds of administrative duties and publishing important information to the entire staff at the institution. As a Ph.D. student he participated in the SASS Conference in Los Angeles, U.S.A. where he presented a paper entitled ”Strindberg´s image of the mother at fin-de-siècle”, and also in the ”The Future of Comparative Literature and the Nordic Perspective” Conference in Helsinki, presenting a paper “Strindberg and Norén – a case study of comparative literature”.
In autumn 2005, as a newly-graduated Ph. D. of Swedish Literature, and having also completed a Preparatory Pedagogical Course for academic teachers and Lund University, Bjorn was engaged as a teacher for first year literature students at his mother institution in Lund, giving lectures on among other things Joseph Conrad´s Heart of Darkness, and Henrik Ibsen´s Peer Gynt.
In December 2005, following an invitation from Head of Department Sanda Tomescu, Bjorn gave a lecture on Lars Norén for students of Scandinavian languages at the University Babes-Bolyai in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The arrangement became an inspiring fulfilment since for many years he held a deep interest in the Eastern European countries, an interest he shares with his wife Åsa. She has her own impressive career and has amongst other things translated theatrical works into Romanian, and she and Bjorn sometimes do joint presentations.
From 2006 to 2019, Bjorn then worked as Swedish Lecturer at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Bucharest University, Romania where, funded by both the Romanian University and the Swedish Institute, Stockholm. Here he developed a comprehensive B.A.-programme for Swedish as Second Foreign Language with a main focus on Swedish Literature and Culture, including among other things courses on Swedish Children´s literature, Modern Bourgeois Family Drama from Strindberg to Norén, and The Swedish Welfare State and its Ideology of Solidarity.
Bjorn found his work at the faculty in Bucharest highly stimulating, having the opportunity to use all aspects of his educational expertise teaching and introducing the cultural history and various aspects of his language to young students who typically began with relatively little knowledge of the Nordic Countries, Languages and Cultures in general. In Romania he also developed contacts with editors of different humanistic research periodicals and cultural magazines, which enabled him to continue publishing articles in the areas of his interests, partly in Romanian, partly in English. His experience of many years in a distant Eastern European country and different culture inspired the monograph “Life as a Stranger – on the Outsidership of the Emigrant in works of Moberg, Kallifatides and Khemiri”, published in august 2019, at the very time when he moved back to Sweden with his family.
Since 2010, Bjorn has also worked with IBDP Swedish Language A and B students, from 2016 through Langford International Education Consultancy. Bjorn also since 2012 serves as a trainer at online Swedish language courses aimed at Medical staff, through the company Medicarrera, which currently is his main occupation. This combination of experiences make him ideally-suited to work with our SSST Swedish Literature students. Bjorn is constantly engaged in what always has been his greatest passion in life, the Swedish language itself. Including both theoretical and practical aspects.