She later added to her qualifications with Russian and librarianship. Afterwards she had several jobs in Brno, including work as a secretary at the editorial board of the monthly magazine Věda a život. In 1969 she left the Republic with her family, stayed in Spain for two years and then settled in Sweden.
Her first job was at the city library in Malmo. In February 1974 she got a job as a teacher of Czech at the Slavonic Insitute (now the Institute of Central and Eastern European Studies) of the Humanities Faculty at Lund University. There she was awarded her doctorate in Slavonic studies (Swedish abbreviation Fil. Dr). However, she did not lose touch with Swedish libraries and over the years updated them on Czech and Slovak literature both at home and abroad, helping in the purchase and cataloguing of books. She worked at the university until her retirement (2000). For her long and distinguished university career she was awarded the Golden Medal of the Swedish state, and Masaryk University in Brno awarded her a silver medal for her teaching work in Slavonic studies.
Apart from her teaching and specialist work she has also dedicated much of her time to emigree societies such as Sdružení svobodných Čechoslováků (The Association of Free Czechoslovaks) in northern Sweden (as a member of the committee and its chairwoman) and Nadace Charty 77 (Charter 77 Foundation) in Stockholm (she was involved in providing financial support to publishers in exile and she was the secretary of the Seifert Prize from its conception to the time it was handed over to Czechoslovakia in 1990). Apart from this she also edited the quarterly magazine Röster från Tjeckoslovakien (Voices from Czechoslovakia), which provided information on political and cultural life in Czechoslovakia, particularly the Czech lands (several editions of the magazine were dedicated to writers such as L. Vaculík, M. Šimečka, B. Hrabal, E. Kantůrková, K. Pecka, D. Hodrová, Z. Brabcová, S. Richterová; for a more detailed list see the catalogue of exile writings in Libri prohibiti).
Her long-term interest in the work of Hrabal resulted in the publication Bohumil Hrabals litterära collage (Lund Slavonic Monographs, Lund 2003) and in the Czech edition Hrabalovy literární koláže [Hrabal’s Literary Collage] (Akropolis, Praha 2004).
She is currently working on the reception of Czech authors’ work in Sweden. She has published articles on Holan, Hrabal, Seifert and Karel Čapek. She is now writing about Ivan Klíma. In connection with this, she has also been involved with Czech Radio 3-Vltava, for whom she prepared an hour-long programme last year entitled Czech Themes in Swedish Literature and a shorter programme on Anders Hammalund, who has written two books on Czech culture.
She is a member of the team working on the project Between Reconciliation and Conflict. The Politics of Memory in Europe after 1989. The project is led by Prof. Barbara Törnquvist-Plewa of the Institute of Central and Eastern European Studies at Lund University. She is concentrating particularly on these themes: recollections of the persecution and murder of Romanies, how these are reflected in Romany and Czech literature, and also recollections of the expulsion of the Germans in Czech literature after 1989.
In 2010 she will be on the jury for the Jaroslav Seifert Prize for a second time.
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