Irene Gilsenan Nordin is
Professor of English at Dalarna University, Sweden. She
was born in
1947 in County Meath, Ireland. She studied at Coloma College of
Education in London and qualified as a teacher in 1970. During the early
1970's, she worked as a primary school teacher in London and Ireland. In
1974, she went to Africa as a volunteer, and worked there for a number
of years as a teacher of English– first in Kenya and then Botswana. In
1981, she moved to Dalarna, Sweden, with her Swedish husband, whom she
met in Africa. She was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in English and
Computer Science at Dalarna University in 1989, and has taught English
at Dalarna University since 1991. In 1999, she defended her doctoral
thesis in English Literature at Uppsala University, on the poetry of
Seamus Heaney. She became Docent at Dalarna University in 2007, and
Professor of English at Dalarna University in 2010.