Sif Ríkharðsdóttir was appointed as assistant professor in Comparative Literature at the University of Iceland in 2012. Before that she was a visiting fellow at Clare Hall,
University of Cambridge (2011). She has been Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Iceland since 2017.[2] Her research is mainly focused on European medieval literature, the history of emotion and emotion research, cultural studies and research on cultural transmission, translations and gender studies.[3][4] Her books and articles have appeared in the UK, in Iceland, in the US and in Germany.
Sif has held multiple administrative appointments, including as the Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of Iceland, as Head of the Graduate Studies Committee, and as a board member of the Research Fund of the University of Iceland. She has chaired and set on several local and international expert panels for research funding agencies, including the
Icelandic Research Fund,
HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area), the
Irish Research Council and the
National Science Centre of Poland. She was the President of the Nordic Branch of the
International Arthurian Society[5] and has been actively involved in
the Medieval Academy of America.[6][7] She is the Series Editor of Studies in Old Norse Literature at
Boydell & Brewer[8] with Carolyne Larrington and sits on the editorial board of the series Philologica Classica e Medievale at
L’Erma di Bretschneider in Rome in Italy.
Arthur of the North: Histories, Emotions and Imaginations, Special Issue of Scandinavian Studies 87.1 (2015), edited by Bjørn Bandlien, Stefka G. Eriksen and Sif Rikhardsdottir (See
excerpt on Project Muse).
Articles and book chapters
‘Empire of Emotion: The Formation of Emotive Literary Identities and Mentalities in the North’, in Crossing Borders in the Insular Middle Ages, edited by Aisling Byrne and Victoria Flood, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe 30, Turnhaut: Brepols, 2019, 189–210.
‘The Phantom of Romance: Traces of Romance Transmission and the Question of Originality’, in Medieval Romance Across European Borders, edited by Miriam Muth, Medieval Narratives in Transmission 1, Turnhaut: Brepols, 2018, 133–51.
'Chronology, Anachronism and Translatio Imperii', in Handbook of Arthurian Romance: King Arthur's Court in Medieval European Literature, edited by Johnny McFadyen and Leah Tether, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017, 135–49.
‘Hugræn fræði, tilfinningar og miðaldir’ [Cognitive Studies, Emotions and the Middle Ages]. Ritið 3 (2012), 67–89. Special Issue on Cognitive Studies, edited by Þórhallur Eyþórsson and Bergljót Kristjánsdóttir.