Kjersti Fløttum - Biography#

Kjersti Fløttum is professor of French linguistics at the Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen, since 1996. She was Vice-Rector for international relations from 2005 to 2009 at the University of Bergen and has since 2013 been member of the university board. Her research fields are text and genre theory and discourse analysis, with a focus on linguistic polyphony in scientific, political and climate change discourse as well as on narrative structures in climate change discourse. Fløttum has headed several international cross-disciplinary projects: KIAP 2001-06, on academic discourse; EURLING 2005-12, on European political discourse; LINGCLIM 20013-17, on climate change discourse.

She is co-author of the books ScaPoLine (2004) and Academic Voices (2006), and editor of Speaking to Europe (2013) and The role of language in the climate change debate (2017). She has published substantially in international journals such as Journal of Pragmatics, Journal of Language and Politics, Language & Communication, Text & Talk, Climatic Change, Global Environmental Change, Nature Climate Change, and in Oxford Research Encyclopedias.

Together with “1001Films” Fløttum is co-producer of the documentary “Talking about climate” (https://vimeo.com/178449717) and has been active in various contexts of research dissemination.

Fløttum has played an important role in research education; she was head of the National PhD research school in linguistics and philology 2006-2007 and was the initiator and head of the international Bergen Summer Research School (BSRS) 2008–2011, where she is still member of the scientific committee.

In 2014 Fløttum received an Honorary doctorate: Doctor honoris causa, from the Faculty of Languages, Uppsala University, Sweden, and in 2016 an Award for excellence in research dissemination, from the Faculty of Humanities, University of Bergen. Fløttum is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.