Mette Steenberg holds a postdoctoral position at the Technologies of the Mind project at Aarhus University, Denmark. Originally trained in cognitive semiotics, she is currently working on an exploratory field study investigating reading in both psychiatric and educational settings. She uses participatory observation and linguistic analysis of responses to explore links between forms of reading, reading engagement and reading outcome in the domains of learning and mental health.

Mette is part of the IGEL North group, which is a group of researchers aiming to promote empirical approaches to reading, media and culture within the Nordic academia. IGEL stands for The International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature and Media, and the research group describe themselves as particularly concerned with issues of literacy and reader response, media psychology, and the social value of literary reading.  

 "Receiving the NOS-HS exploratory workshop grant is a very important step for our group, as it allows us to formalize the network and develop interdisciplinary, empirical research on literary reading within a Nordic context", says a happy Mette Stenbeerg.