Chair no. 3 - David Håkansson

Linguist.
Inducted: 2023

David Håkansson was born in Kristianstad in 1978. He is Professor of Swedish Language and Linguistics at Uppsala University and Dean of the University’s Faculty of Languages. In 2008, he received his doctorate from Lund University with the thesis 'Syntactic Variation and Change. A Study of Subjectless Clauses in Old Swedish'. In this study, he deals partly with the development of a subject requirement in Swedish and partly with more general questions relating to the process and causes of linguistic change. Håkansson continues to take a particular interest in the latter, focusing mainly on problems arising from grammar and historical style. His research encompasses various periods stretching back all the way from Modern Swedish to Early Old Swedish. In his acclaimed anthology Why Linguistics? Ares of Interest, Objects of Study and Driving Forces (2017), he provides a multifaceted picture of the role of theory in linguistics while emphasizing the importance of formulating research studies that are highly relevant both from an empirical and a theoretical perspective.

Håkansson was a member of the Young Academy of Sweden 2013–2018 and is today both a member of the Royal Society of the Humanities at Uppsala and a board member of the Swedish Society for Belles-Lettres. He is moreover the editor of the journal Språk och stil and the lead for the project 'How Fiction Made Swedish Modern. Fictional Prose, Authors and Language Change 1830-1930'. This project, which includes both linguists and literary scholars, seeks to highlight the role of fiction in the process of language change.

Håkansson was elected to chair number 3 at the Academy on 27 April 2023, succeeding the linguist Sture Allén, and took up his post on 20 December of the same year.