Malgorzata Anna Packalén (neé Szulc) was born in Poznan, Poland. She obtained her Bachelor Degree in Polish and Swedish Philology at Adam-Mickiewicz University, Poznan, where she also received her Masters Degree in 1977. She was a recipient of the Swedish Institute's scholarship program in Sweden in 1975-76.

Packalén has been affiliated to the Department of Modern Languages at Uppsala University since 1979. Here she did research studies in Slavic languages in 1982-87 and received her Ph.D. in Slavic languages in 1987. She was holder of Postdoctoral Fellowships at the Department of Slavic Languages at Uppsala University in 1989-91, Research Fellow at The Swedish Research Council (HSFR) in 1991-92 and has been a researcher and Senior Lecturer in Polish since 1993. She became an Associate Professor at Uppsala University in 1997 and Professor in Polish in 2000.

M.A. Packalén has published a monograph on contemporary Polish poetry Pokolenie 68. Studium o poezji polskiej lat siedemdziesiatych (The Generation of '68, Studies in Polish Poetry of the 70s., 1987, second ed. 1997), a comparative study of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Polish and Swedish literature Under två kulturers ok (Under the Yoke of Two Cultures, 2001). She is co-editor of an anthology Swedish-Polish Modernism. Literature - Language Culture (2003). Her publications include articles on Polish language, poetry and prose, as well as cultural and gender studies. She was also author of numerous articles on Polish literature for the Swedish National Encyclopedia, Nationalencyklopedin (1990-1999).