GRANT
Research Project Explores How We Tell Stories About Travel Today
Associate Professor Rune Graulund from Center for American Studies, Department of Culture and Language, has received more than DKK 6 million from Independent Research Fund Denmark for the research project "Writing Travel in the Twenty-First Century: Mobility and Authenticity in the Planetary Emergency". The project examines how contemporary travel is described and shared. The project looks at both traditional travel writing—like books—and newer digital formats such as blogs and social media.
Travel has always been part of human life, and the stories we tell about it help shape how we see the world. But the way we write about travel is changing. The project will explore how people today describe their journeys, and how digital tools and platforms are creating new ways of telling travel stories.
Technology is changing our sense of place
The project will look at different types of travel—from slow, local trips to fast, global ones—and ask how digital media may be changing or even replacing traditional travel writing. It will also explore how travel stories reflect bigger issues like who gets to travel, how travel affects the planet, and how technology is changing our sense of place.
Using critical perspectives from postcolonial studies, environmental thinking, and digital humanities, the research project will offer new insights into how travel writing works today. The goal is to better understand how we imagine movement, distance, and connection in a world that is connected as never before, but also a planet that is in crisis.
Meet the researcher
Associate Professor Rune Graulund is a researcher at Department of Culture and Language