Ebba Witt-Brattström (; born 1 June 1953) is a Swedish scholar in comparative literature. She is Professor of Literature and head of department at Södertörn University outside Stockholm, and a well-known feminist.

Witt-Brattström completed her PhD with a dissertation on the Swedish author Moa Martinson (Moa Martinson: skrift och drift i trettiotalet) at Stockholm University in 1988. She has since written a number of texts on St. Bridget of Sweden, Victoria Benedictsson and Edith Södergran (among others). She also translated the novel Egalia's Daughters by Gerd Brantenberg into Swedish. In 2010 she published a history of the feminist movement in Sweden, 'Å alla kära systrar (For all dear sisters).

Ebba Witt-Brattström

Witt-Brattström was the Dag Hammarskjöld Visiting Professor at the Department for Northern European Studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin from 2008. From 2012 she is Professor of Nordic Literature at Helsinki University.

Ebba Witt-Brattström

In the 1970s she was a member of the feminist organisation Grupp 8, and in 2005 she was one of the founders of the feminist political organisation and party Feministiskt Initiativ, although she later distanced herself from the organisation and criticized what she saw as its strong left-wing tendencies.

Ebba Witt-Brattström

Between 1989 and 2014 Ebba Witt-Brattström was married to Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy. They have three sons. She also has an older son from an earlier marriage.

Both her parents came to Sweden as refugees during the Second World War. Her father was a German anti-Nazi from a relatively affluent family, while her mother was an Estonian from a poor peasant's family. Her parents divorced early, and she grew up with her mother.

References

1953 births

Living people

Feminist studies scholars

Swedish feminists

Stockholm University alumni

Academic staff of Södertörn University

Academic staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin

Swedish people of German descent

Swedish people of Estonian descent

21st-century Swedish women politicians

Politicians from Stockholm

Moa Award recipients

Swedish women academics