Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon (born August 29, 1957) is a professor of cultural history at the University of Iceland, the Faculty of History and Philosophy. He has specialised in microhistory. He was an indepentent scholar from 1994 when he returned from USA after finishing his Ph.D.-degree in history at Carnegie Mellon Univeristy and until 2010. From 1998 to 2010 he was part of the Reykjavík Academy (RA), an independent research institute, and the first chair of RA. In 2010 he left RA when he got a three year research position at the National Museum of Iceland named after Dr. Kristján Eldjárn, the former president of Iceland and an archaeologist. In 2014 he was hired as a Accociate Professor at the University of Iceland. A year later he became a full professor in cultural history.
Sigurður Gylfi established the Center for Microhistorical Reserach in 2003, now part of the Institute of History at the University of Iceland. Sigurður Gylfi is the author of twenty six books and has been involved in the publication of twenty five more through a book series which he has co-edited and few collections of essays. He has publised some of his monographs in English, like Autobiographical Traditions in Egodocuments. Icelandic Literacy Practices (London: Bloomsbury, 2023). 272 pages., Emotional Experience and Microhistory: A life story of a destitute pauper poet in the 19th century published by Routledge in 2020. Wasteland with Words. A social history of Iceland (London: Reaktion Books, 2010), What is Microhistory? Theory and Practice (London: Routledge, 2013), co-author Dr István M. Szijártó, and Minor Knowledge and Microhistory. Manuscript Culture in the Nineteenth Century, co-author Dr. Davíð Ólafsson (London: Routledge 2017). He is also the author of numerus articles published in Iceland and abroad.
Sigur
ður Gylfi is the founder and one of four editors (with Dr Davíð Ólafsson, Bragi Þorgrímur Ólafsson og Sólveig Ólafsdóttir) of a book series named: ‘The Anthology from Icelandic Popular Culture’ (Sýnisbók íslenskrar alþýðumenningar) which has already published 32 books, mostly on the topics of egodocuments and everyday life history. See an Icelandic homepage www.sia.hi.is. He is also a co-editor, with Dr István M. Szijártó, of a new book series publiched by Routledge called ‘Microhistories’.