I am a professor of history women's and gender history at the University of Iceland. I hold a PhD in history from the University of Iceland. My doctoral thesis, Nútímans konur (Women of Modernity) was published in 2011. 

For almost three decades my work and research has centered on women’s and gender history. I have participated in national, Nordic and European research projects and networks in the field of history and gender studies, both as a historian and in relation with my work as the director of The Women’s History Archives in Iceland 1996–2001 and as a specialist at The Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Iceland 2001–2005. I was a part time teacher at the Faculty of Philosophy, History and Archaeology at the University of Iceland during my doctoral and postdoctral studies. Since 2016 I've held a position in women's and gender history, as a professor since 2020.

My publication has been in the fields  women's and gender history, biography, correspondence, and (women's) historiography.

Among my works in English are articles in Life Writing (2010, 2015) and Women's History Review (2018). I co-edited Biography, Gender, and History: Nordic Perspectives (2016) and have published chapters in The Palgrave Handbook of Auto/Biography (2020) and Suffrage and Its Legacy in the Nordic and Beyond (2024).

My books in Icelandic are the above-mentioned Nútímans konur (see English Summary), in which I explore women's education and the construction of gender in late 19th century Iceland.

In 2020 I co-authored Konur sem kjósa. Aldarsaga (A Centenary of Women Voters), a study on women's political and cultural practices and agency in 20th-century Iceland. My co-authors are fellow historians Kristín Svava Tómasdóttir, Ragnheiður Kristjánsdóttir and Þorgerður H. Þorvaldsdóttir. The book was partly based on the project In the Wake of Suffrage. Icelandic Women as cultural and political agents, 1915-2015, funded by Rannis, The Icelandic Research Fund.

In 2023 I published Ég er þinn elskari (I Am Your Lover. Baldvin Einarsson's Letters to Kristrún Jónsdóttir, 1825–1832), which is edited transcription of 19th century love letters with a scholarly introduction.

In 2024 I published an extensive historical biography of a 19th century Icelandic woman, Strá fyrir straumi (Flowing With The Water. The Life of Sigríður Pálsdóttir, 1809–1871). This is a book about he life and letters of Sigríður Pálsdóttir who left a record of her life in the form of 250 letters she wrote to her brother for more than half a century. These letters cover a lifetime and give invaluable insight into the daily life and experiences of a woman living in an agricultural society, with a population of 59.000 people in 1850, and still not affected by industrialization or urbanization. The book was nominated to several literary prizes and won the Hagþenkir (the Association of Icelandic Non-fiction Writers) 2024 Literary Prize for academic work of outstanding quality.