The Network of Early Career Researchers in Old Norse (“NECRON”) is an international, interdisciplinary network of PhD Students and Early Career Researchers (i.e. Post-Doctoral Researchers, Adjuncts, External Lecturers, Museum and Libraries Employees) working in all fields of research on the Medieval North and its afterlives.
NECRON was first formalised in 2017 with the inaugural workshop: Trends and Challenges in Early Career Scholarship, which took place at the University of Copenhagen 21-22 October 2017. NECRON plans to hold biannual workshops, thus allowing the formal and informal discussion of key trends in our field and the current issues facing younger scholars seeking further academic employment. These events will address key academic trends in the study of medieval Scandinavia, a number of challenges faced by Nordic PhD students and ECRs in particular, and to allow attendees to benefit from one another’s knowledge in both professional and academic spheres. These workshops will also enable a great deal of interdisciplinary communication and promote Nordic cooperation, aiming to serve PhD Students and ECRs from any field working with medieval Scandinavia. Holding such events in conjunction with another conference relevant to NECRON’s members, thereby easing the financial pressure on junior scholars, will establish a long-term forum for international, inter-Nordic information exchange going forward, supporting junior scholars in the face of a highly diverse and rapidly developing field.
At NECRON’s second workshop, it was decided that the network should remain an open organisation without any official membership and it should continue to be run on a voluntary basis. Organisers of the NECRON events are considered voluntary board members.
CURRENT BOARD:
NECRON board 2026
Erika Dell’Aquila is a PhD Candidate at the University of Trento, Department of Literature and Philosophy. Her research project centres on the French and Swedish prose versions of the Vita Amici et Amelii Carissimorum, a popular 11th-century legend. Erika earned her MA in April 2024 from the University of Milano, where her thesis examined the Romance and Scandinavian versions of Floire et Blancheflor.
Erika’s research centres on the transmission of medieval European texts, particularly on how various versions of the same work circulate across Europe, adapt to diverse social, cultural, and literary contexts, and the different translation strategies employed. Her primary focus is on Romance and Scandinavian literature and philology, and she possesses expertise in manuscript studies, codicology and digital philology.
Grace O’Duffy is currently a Junior Fellow with the Harvard Society of Fellows, where she is working on a book project focused on rape narratives across the medieval North Atlantic. Before this, she completed her DPhil at St John’s College, Oxford, producing a thesis on the topic of sexual violence in the Old Norse Íslendingasögur and fornaldarsögur. She received her MPhil in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Queens’ College, Cambridge, and her MA in English from the University of St Andrews.
Grace is broadly interested in studies of gender and sexuality, with a specialism in sexual and gendered violence. She is especially interested in reshaping and rethinking fields of study that might be considered ‘difficult’ or ‘sensitive’, and as such has co-founded a network entitled A.D.A.M (Addressing Difficult Aspects of the Medieval), which aims to bring together and provide resources for scholars working on such topics.
Hannah Armstrong is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Tübingen. She completed her PhD at the University of York in May 2025 with a thesis on the reception and influence of the Íslendingasögur on British writing about the islands of the North Atlantic between 1860 and the present. She also holds a B.A. from the University of East Anglia and an M.St. in English (650-1550) from the University of Oxford, St John’s College. Her current research project applies Island Studies methodologies and insights to the Íslendingasögur corpus.
Natalie Hopwood is a PhD candidate at the University of Leeds, housed in both the School of English and the Institute for Medieval Studies. Her research project is on monstrous encounters as points of intertextuality in Old Norse fornaldarsögur and riddarasögur, specifically examples of dragons, dwarfs, and the undead to analyse the rise of fictionality and the concept of ‘popular literature’ in the later Middle Ages. She earned her MPhil from the University of Cambridge in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, where she worked on the undead episodes in Eyrbyggja saga.
Natalie’s research interests are monster studies and intertextuality, medieval popular culture, and the development of fiction as a concept in later saga literature. She also works on the reception of Old Norse mythology, and other medieval literature, in modern media, particularly American comic books such as The Mighty Thor, The Demon, and The Sandman, and how they are representative of contemporary political and culture interests.
Timothy Liam Waters is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Germanic Studies at Charles University in Prague. He holds a Ph.D. in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures with a concurrent degree in Medieval Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, having previously attained an M.A. from the same institution and a B.A. from the University of Cambridge, Clare College. His current project, Literary New Materialism in the Scandinavian Middle Ages, investigates medieval mentalities towards the human and the non-human through the frameworks of new object philosophy, assemblage theory, and speculative realism.
PREVIOUS BOARDS:
NECRON board 2025
Amrei Katharina Stanzel, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
Erika Dell’Aquila, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Grace O’Duffy, Harvard, USA
Hannah Armstrong, University of Tübingen, Germany
Natalie Hopwood, University of Leeds, UK
raenelda rivera, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Timothy Liam Waters, Charles University, Czechia
NECRON board 2023 and 2024
Solveig Bollig, Umeå University, Sweden
Ela Sefcikova, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
Katrín Lísa van der Linde Mikaelsdóttir, Centre for Digital Humanities and Arts (MSHL/CDHA), University of Iceland
Bob van Strijen, University of Oslo, Norway
Katherine Beard, University of Oxford, UK
Beñat Elortza Larrea, Nord University, Norway
Paola Peratello, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy
NECRON board 2021 and 2022
Gwendolyne Knight, Stockholm University, Sweden
Sven Kraus, University of Basel, Switzerland
Fraser Miller, Stockholm University, Sweden
Friederike Richter, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
Juliane Tiemann, University of Bergen, Norway
NECRON board 2020
Katarzyna Anna Kapitan, University of Iceland, Iceland
Helen Frances Leslie-Jacobsen, University of Bergen, Norway
Luke John Murphy, University of Iceland, Iceland
Simon Nygaard, University of Aarhus, Denmark
Beth Rogers, University of Iceland, Iceland
NECRON board 2019
Helen Frances Leslie-Jacobsen, University of Bergen, Norway
Katarzyna Anna Kapitan, Museum of National History, Frederiksborg Castle, Denmark
Patrick Farrugia, University of Bergen, Norway
Beth Rogers, University of Iceland, Iceland
NECRON board 2018
Beth Rogers, University of Iceland, Iceland
Helen Frances Leslie-Jacobsen, University of Bergen, Norway
Luke John Murphy, University of Leicester, United Kingdom
Katarzyna Anna Kapitan, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
NECRON board 2017
Katarzyna Anna Kapitan, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Helen Frances Leslie-Jacobsen, University of Bergen, Norway
Luke John Murphy, Stockholm University, Sweden
Simon Nygaard, University of Aarhus, Denmark
NECRON 
