Mads Thomsen

International Visitor
Comparative Literature, Aarhus University, Denmark

​​Mads Rosendahl Thomsen is Professor of Comparative Literature at Aarhus University, Denmark. He has published in the fields of literary historiography, modernist literature, world literature, digital humanities, and posthumanism. His most recently submitted publication is a short book on the concept and history of text. He is the author of Mapping World Literature: International Canonization and Transnational Literatures (2008), The New Human in Literature: Posthuman Visions of Changes in Body, Mind and Society after 1900 (2013), a co-author with Stefan Helgesson of Literature and the World (2019), and the editor of 14 books, including World Literature: A Reader (2012), The Posthuman Condition: Ethics, Aesthetics and Politics of Biotechnological Challenges (2012), Danish Literature as World Literature (2017), Literature: An Introduction to Theory and Analysis (2017), and The Bloomsbury Handbook of Posthumanism (2020). 

Thomsen has been director of the Digital Arts Initiative (2017-21) and the research program Human Futures (2016-22), both at Aarhus University. Thomsen was co-director of the research project Posthuman Aesthetics (2014-18), and he is the PI of the VELUX FONDEN-funded project Fabula-NET which investigates literary preferences and quality using digital methods (2021-25). He is a co-editor of Orbis Litterarum, an advisory board member of the book series Literatures as World Literature (Bloomsbury Academic), and a member of the editorial board of Journal of World Literature. Thomsen is a member of the Academia Europaea (2010-), the advisory board of The Institute for World Literature (2010-13, 2018-22), and the general assembly of DARIAH (2022-). Thomsen has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University four times between 2001-2015.

Thomsen was nominated by the Department of Modern Thought and Literature.

Mads Thomsen